AN  INTRODUCTION  TO 

SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

. WILLIAM  McDOTJ(L\LL 


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National  Committee  | 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  I 

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LIBRARY 

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OF  THE 

U N I VLR.S  ITY 
Of  ILLINOIS 


From  the  Library 
of 

Maurice  T.  Price 

301 

M1471 

1912a 


REMOTE  STORAGE 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


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AN  INTRODUCTION  TO 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


BY 

WILLIAM  McDOUGALL,  F.R.S, 

LATE  FELLOW  OF  ST.  JOHN’S  COLLEGE,  CAMBRIDGE,  WILDE  READER 
IN  MENTAL  PHILOSOPHY  IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  OXFORD 


SIXTH  EDITION 


JOHN  W.  LUCE  & CO. 
BOSTON 
MCMXII 


/ 


■^rage 


.A  cx,. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  FIRST  EDITION 


IN  this  little  book  I have  attempted  to  deal  with  a 
difficult  branch  of  psychology  in  a way  that  shall 
make  it  intelligible  and  interesting  to  any  cultivated 
reader,  and  that  shall  imply  no  previous  familiarity  with 
psychological  treatises  on  his  part ; for  I hope  that  the 
book  may  be  of  service  to  students  of  all  the  social 
sciences,  by  providing  them  with  the  minimum  of 
psychological  doctrine  that  is  an  indispensable  part  of 
the  equipment  for  work  in  any  of  these  sciences.  I 
have  not  thought  it  necessary  to  enter  into  a discussion 
of  the  exact  scope  of  social  psychology  and  of  its 
delimitation  from  sociology  or  the  special  social 
sciences  ; for  I believe  that  such  questions  may  be 
'left  to  solve  themselves  in  the  course  of  time  with  the 
advance  of  the  various  branches  of  science  concerned. 
I would  only  say  that  I believe  social  psychology 
to  offer  for  research  a vast  and  fertile  field,  which 
has  been  but  little  worked  hitherto,  and  that  in  this 
book  I have  attempted  to  deal  only  with  its  most 
fundgfp^ental  problems,  those  the  solution  of  which  is  a 
presupposition  of  all  profitable  work  in  the  various 
branches  of  the  science. 

If  I have  severely  criticised  some  of  the  views  from 
which  I dissent,  and  have  connected  these  views  with 
the  names  of  writers  who  have  maintained  them,  it  is 


vi 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


because  I believe  such  criticism  to  be  a great  aid  to 
clearness  of  exposition  and  also  to  be  much  needed  in 
the  present  state  of  psychology  ; the  names  thus  made 
use  of  were  chosen  because  the  bearers  of  them  are 
authors  well  known  for  their  valuable  contributions  to 
mental  science.  I hope  that  this  brief  acknowledgment 
may  serve  as  an  apology  to  any  of  them  under  whose 
eyes  my  criticisms  may  fall.  I owe  also  some  apology 
to  my  fellow-workers  for  the  somewhat  dogmatic  tone  I 
have  adopted.  I would  not  be  taken  to  believe  that 
my  utterances  upon  any  of  the  questions  dealt  with 
are  infallible  or  incapable  of  being  improved  upon  ; j 
but  repeated  expressions  of  deference  and  of  the  sense  • 
of  my  own  uncertainty  would  be  out  of  place  in  a semi- 
popular  work  of  this  character  and  would  obscure  the 
course  of  my  exposition. 

Although  I have  tried  to  make  this  book  intelligible 
and  useful  to  those  who  are  not  professed  students  of 
psychology,  it  is  by  no  means  a mere  dishing  up  of 
current  doctrines  for  popular  consumption  ; and  it  may 
add  to  its  usefulness  in  the  hands  of  professional 
psychologists  if  I indicate  here  the  principal  points 
which,  to  the  best  of  my  belief,  are  original  contributions 
to  psychological  doctrine. 

In  Chapter  II.  I have  tried  to  render  fuller  and  clearer 
the  conceptions  of  instinct  and  of  instinctive  process, 
from  both  the  psychical  and  the  nervous  sides. 

In  Chapter  III.  I have  elaborated  a principle,  briefly 
enunciated  in  a previous  work,  which  is,  I believe,  of  the 
first  importance  for  the  understanding  of  the  life  of 
emotion  and  action — the  principle,  namely,  that  all 
emotion  is  the  affective  aspect  of  instinctive  process. 
The  adoption  of  this  principle  leads  me  to  define 
emotion  more  strictly  and  narrowly  than  has  been  done 


PREFACE 


vii 


by  other  writers;  and  I have  used  it  as  a guide  in 
attempting  to  distinguish  the  more  important  of  the 
primary  emotions. 

In  Chapter  IV.  I have  combated  the  current  view 
that  imitation  is  to  be  ascribed  to  an  instinct  of 
imitation ; and  I have  attempted  to  give  greater 
precision  to  the  conception  of  suggestion,  and  to  define 
the  principal  conditions  of  suggestibility.  I have 
adopted  a view  of  the  most  simple  and  primitive  form 
of  sympathy  that  has  been  previously  enunciated  by 
Herbert  Spencer  and  others,  and  have  proposed  what 
seems  to  be  the  only  possible  theory  of  the  way  in 
which  sympathetic  induction  of  emotion  takes  place. 

I have  then  suggested  a modification  of  Professor 
Groos’s  theory  of  play,  and  in  this  connection  have 
indulged  in  a speculation  as  to  the  peculiar  nature  and 
origin  of  the  emulative  impulse. 

In  Chapter  V.  I have  attempted  a physiological 
interpretation  of  Mr.  Shand’s  doctrine  of  the  sentiments, 
and  have  analysed  the  principal  complex  emotions  in 
the  light  of  this  doctrine  and  of  the  principle  laid  down 
in  Chapter  II.,  respecting  the  relation  of  emotion  to 
instinct.  The  analyses  reached  are  in  many  respects 
novel;  and  I venture  to  think  that,  though  they  may 
need  much  correction  in  detail,  they  have  the  merit  of 
having  been  achieved  by  a method  very  much  superior  to 
the  one  commonly  pursued,  the  latter  being  that  of  intro- 
spective analysis  unaided  by  any  previous^determination  ! 
of  the  primary  emotions  by  the  comparative  method.  ' 

In  Chapters  VI.,  VII.,  VIII.,  and  IX.  I have  applied 
Mr,,_Shand’s  doctrine^  the  sentiments  and  Jhe  result 
reached  in  the  earlier  chapters  to  the  description  of  the 
organisation  of  the  life  of  emotion  and . impyl^  and 
have  built  upon  these  foundations  an  account  which 


viii 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


is  more  definite  than  any  other  with  which  I am 
acquainted^  Attention  may  be  drawn  to  the  account 
offered  of  the  nature  of  active  or  developed  sympathy ; 
but  the  principal  novelty,  contained  in  these  chapters  is 
what  may,  perhaps,  without  abuse  of  the  phrase,  be 
called  a theory  of  volition. 

Of  the  heterogeneous  asso!tment  of  ideas  presented 
in  the  second  section  of  the  book  I find  it  impossible 
to  say  what  and  how  much  is  original.  No  doubt 
almost  all  of  them  derive  from  a moderately  extensive 
reading  of  anthropological  and  sociological  literature. 

I have  tried  to  make  the  reading  of  the  book  easier 
by  confining  to  footnotes  the  discussion  of  some  difficult 
questions  of  secondary  importance. 

Among  those  from  whose  views  I have  ventured  to 
express  dissent  in  certain  respects  is  Mr.  A.  F..  Shand. 
I have,  however,  adopted  and  made  great  use  of  his 
theory  of  the  sentiments,  and  I would  take  this 
opportunity  of  saying  how  much  I feel  myself,  in 
common  with  other  psychologists,  indebted  to  him  for 
this  theory,  and  how  much  I have  profited,  not  only  by 
his  too  scanty  published  work,  but  also  by  exchange  of 
views  in  conversation. 

I have  pleasure  also  in  acknowledging  kind  help 
received  from  Dr.  C.  W.  Saleeby,  who  has  read  the 
proof-sheets  of  this  book. 

I hope  that  this  book  may  be  followed  shortly  by 
another  which  will  build  upon  the  foundations  laid  in 
this  one,  and  will  contain  a discussion  of  the  general 
principles  of  collective  psychology  or  the  psychology  of 
groups,  and  an  attempt  to  apply  those  principles  to  the 
study  of  the  most  interesting  and  important  form  of 
collective  mental  life,  the  life  of  peoples. 


W.  McD. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION 


I HAVE  to  return  thanks  for  a number  of  kindly 
appreciations  and  valuable  criticisms  of  this  book. 
I hope  to  profit  by  the  latter,  but  have  not  yet  assimi- 
lated them  so  completely  as  to  have  ventured  to  make 
any  alteration  of  the  text.  This  edition  differs  from  the 
first,  therefore,  only  in  that  a few  verbal  slips  have 
been  rectified. 

I take  this  opportunity  to  guard  myself  against 
two  misunderstandings.  Although  I have  argued 
that  we  must  accept  determinism  in  psychology, 
I do  not  hold  that  the  acceptance  of  determinism 
implies  the  acceptance  of  psycho-physical  monism, 
with  its  implication,  or  rather  postulate,  that  all  human 
action  can  be  explained  in  terms  of  mechanical  causa- 
tion. I hoped  that  my  recognition  of  final  causes  on 
p.  263,  and  sentences  on  pp.  26,  27,  and  44,  would 
sufficiently  show  that  I hold  to  the  reality  of  teleo- 
logical determination  of  human  and  animal  behaviour. 
As  regards  the  free-will  problem,  although  I think  we 
must  accept  determinism  in  psychology  and  in  the 
social  sciences  as  a methodological  postulate,  I am  very 
willing  to  believe  in  a little  dose  of  free-will  if  the 
conception  can  be  made  intelligible  to  me ; but  it  still 
continues  to  elude  my  grasp. 

Tn  view  of  the  remarks  of  several  critics,  I think 

ix 


X 


PREFACE  TO  SECOND  EDITION 


it  worth  while  to  say  very  explicitly  that  I do  not 
mean  to  use  the  word  " sentiment  ” as  a synonym  for 
“complex  emotion.”  The  distinction  is  fundamental 
to  all  the  constructive  part  of  the  book. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  to  me  that  the  distinction 
I have  drawn  between  magic  and  religion  in  the  foot- 
note on  p.  306  was  proposed  by  Sir  Alfred  Lyall  in  an 
essay  in  the  first  volume  of  his  “Asiatic  Studies.”  I 
hasten  to  acknowledge  the  fact,  and  to  apologise  for 
having  put  forward  the  suggestion  as  though  it  were 
a novel  one. 

Since  the  demand  for  a second  edition  of  my  book 
after  less  than  a year  from  the  date  of  its  publication 
seems  to  show  that  it  may  find  its  way  into  the  hands 
of  a considerable  number  of  readers,  I feel,  more  keenly 
than  before,  the  need  for  public  acknowledgment  of  my 
indebtedness  to  other  psychologists.  I would,  there- 
fore, repair  what  now  seems  to  me  a serious  omission 
from  the  preface  to  the  first  edition,  by  indicating  my 
friends  Professors  William  James,  Lloyd  Morgan,  and 
G.  F.  Stont  as  the  writers  from  whose  works  I have 
acquired  my  notions  as  to  the  nature  of  instinct  and 
conation  and  their  role  in  mental  life,  and  whom  I would 
like  to  claim  as  spiritual  fathers  of  whatever  is  of  value 
in  this  book. 

PREFACE  TO  THE  THIR£)  EDITION 

IN  this  edition  I have  made  good  a few  omissions. 

Of  these  additions  the  principal  are  the  paragraphs 
on  remorse  and  on  the  food-seeking  impulse,  which 
will  be  found  on  pages  158  and  83  respectively. 

No  other  considerable  alterations  have  been  made. 

W.  McD. 


PREFACE  TO  FIFTH  EDITION 


XI 


I HAVE  added  to  this  edition  a supplementary 
chapter  on  theories  of  action,  in  which  I have 
set  forth,  more  explicitly  than  in  the  body  of  the  book, 
the  general  theory  of  action  which  underlies  the  whole 
exposition ; and,  in  order  to  justify  it  and  to  set  it  in 
stronger  relief,  I have  added  some  criticisms  of  other 
theories  of  action  that  have  been  and  still  are  widely 
accepted.  This  supplementary  chapter  is  probably  too 
technical  and  controversial  to  interest  the  general 
reader ; but  I hope  that  it  may  render  the  book  more 
useful  to  serious  students  of  the  moral  sciences. 

W,  McD. 

March^  1912 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION  . . • • , . l-l8 

The  position  of  psychology  at  the  basis  of  all  the  social 
sciences  now  theoretically  recognised  but  practically  ig- 
nored— Historical  explanation  of  this  anomalous  state  of 
affairs — Illustrations  of  the  need  of  the  social  sciences  for 
better  psychological  foundations  — Ethics  — Economics- 
Political  science— Philosophy  of  history — Jurisprudence. 


SECTION  I 

THE  MENTAL  CHARACTERS  OF  MAN  OF  PRIMARY 
IMPORTANCE  FOR  HIS  LIFE  IN  SOCIETY 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS  AND  THEIR  PLACE  IN  THE 
CONSTITUTION  OF  THE  HUMAN  MIND  . , . I9--44 

The  vagueness  of  current  conceptions  of  instinct. — The  lack  of 
agreement  as  to  the  role  of  instincts  in  the  human  mind— In- 
stinctive process  is  truly  mental,  and  involves  knowing  and 
feeling  as  well  as  doing — The  physiological  conception  of 
an  instinct  as  an  innate  disposition,  having  three  parts  corres- 

xili 


xiv 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


PAa* 

ponding  to  these  three  functions — The  modification  of  instincts 
on  their  afferent  and  efferent  sides — The  relation  of  instinct  to 
emotion^ Instincts  the  prime  movers  of  all  human  activity. 

CHAPTER  III 

THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  AND  THE  PRIMARY  EMOTIONS 
OF  MAN  . . . . , , . 45-89 

Three  principles  mainly  relied  upon  in  distinguishing  the 
primary  emotions-l^The  instinct  of  flight  and  the  emotion  of 
fear-^he  instinct  of  repulsion  and  the  emotion  of  disgust — 

3l)The  instinct  of  curiosity  and  the  emotion  of  wonder-^he 
instinct  of  pugnacity  and  the  emotion  of  anger^^he 
instincts  of  self-abasement  (or  subjection)  and  of  self-asser- 
tion (or  self-display),  and  the  emotions  of  subjection  and 
elation  (or  negative  and  positive  self-feeling)-^4'he  parental 
instinct  and  the  tender  emotion — The  instinct  of  reproduc- 
tion— ^The  gregarious  instinct— The  instinct  of  acquisition— 

The  instinct  of  construction. 

CHAPTER  IV 

SOME  GENERAL  OR  NON-SPECIFIC  INNATE  TENDENCIES  . 9O-I20 

Sympathy  or  the  sympathetic  induction  of  the  emotions — 
Suggestion  and  suggestibility — Contra-suggestion — Imita- 
tion— The  tendency  to  play  and  the  emulative  impulse — Pro- 
posed modification  of  Professor  Groos’s  theory  of  play— 

Habit — Temperament 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  AND  THE  CONSTITUTION 
OF  SOME  OF  THE  COMPLEX  EMOTIONS  • . . I2I-158 

Mr.  Shand’s  conception  of  a sentiment — Physiological  inter- 
pretation of  this  conception-l-Complex  emotions  that  do  not 
imply  the  existence  of  sentiments — Admiration — Awe — Rever- 
ence— Gratitude — Scorn — Contempt — Loathing — Fascination 
—Envy — Complex  emotions  that  imply  the  existence  of 
sentiments — Reproach — Anxiety — J ealousy — Vengeful  emo- 
tion — Resentment— Shame  — Bashfulness  — The  nature  of 
joyful  and  of  sorrowful  emotion— Of  pity — Of  happiness— 

Of  surpjise. 


CONTENTS 


XV 


CHAPTER  VI 

PAGE 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  . • . 159*173 

Sentiments  of  three  principal  types  : love,  hate,  and  respect — 

The  genesis  of  hate — Parental  love  as  a type  of  highly 
complex  sentiment— Active  sympathy  and  its  role  in  the 
genesis  of  the  sentiment  of  affection  between  persona, 

CHAPTER  VII 

THE  GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  OF  THE  SELF- 
REGARDING  SENTIMENT  .....  174^208 

Illustration  of  behaviour  unregulated  by  self-regarding  senti- 
ment— The  problem  of  moral  conduct  defined — Genesis  of 
ideas  of  self  and  of  other  selves — Why  are  we  so  much 
influenced  by  praise  and  blame  ? — This  is  the  crucial  problem 
for  the  theory  of  morals — The  solution  furnished  by  the 
study  of  the  growth  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment  under 
the  moulding  influences  of  the  social  environment — Regula* 
tion  of  conduct  by  regard  for  praise  and  blame  implies  only 
egoistic  motives — Complication  of  these  motives  by  certain 
pseudo-altruistic  motives  and  by  quasi-altruistic  motives 
springing  from  the  extended  self-regarding  sentiment. 

CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE  OF  SOCIAL  CON- 
DUCT 209-227 

Defects  of  public  opinion  as  supreme  sanction  of  conduct — 
Moral  judgments  are  of  two  kinds,  original  and  imitative — 

The  relation  of  emotion  to  moral  judgment— The  moral 
sentiments  and  their  relation  to  the  moral  tradition — The 
influence  of  admired  personalities — The  influence  of  native 
disposition  on  the  growth  of  moral  sentiments — The  synthesis 
of  the  abstract  moral  sentiments  and  the  self-regarding 
sentiment— The  role  of  aesthetic  ^admiration. 

CHAPTER  IX 

VOLITION  , . . , . . . 228-264 

The  weaker  seems  to  overcome  the  stronger  impulse  in 
moral  effort — Whence  comes  the  energy  that  re-enforccs  the 
weaker  moral  impulse  ?— Freewill  and  determinism — The 


xvi 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


PAGB 

moral  difficulty  of  determinism  very  real,  though  commonly 
misstated — Volition  distinguished  from  other  modes  of  co- 
nation— The  immediate  effects  of  volition — The  inhibitory 
view  of  volition  criticised — Volition  defined  and  illustrated — 

Its  determining  energy  traced  to  the  self-regarding  sentiment 
—Two  types  of  hard  choice — The  sentiment  for  self-control — 
Character — its  relation  to  the  sentiments. 

SECTION  II 

THE  OPERATION  OF  THE  PRIMARY  TENDENCIES  OF  THE 
HUMAN  MIND  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  SOCIETIES 

CHAPTER  X 

THE  REPRODUCTIVE  AND  THE  PARENTAL  INSTINCTS  265-278 

Their  relation  to  the  birth-rate — The  rival  influences  of 
reason  and  of  the  social  sanctions  on  the  operation  of  these 
instincts — No  reason  to  suppose  that  these  instincts  are 
becoming  weaker — The  extensions  of  the  field  of  operation 
of  the  parental  instinct  beyond  the  family. 

^ CHAPTER  XI 

THE  INSTINCT  OF  PUGNACITY  . . • . 279-295 

Its  operation  among  primitive  peoples — its  role  in  the 
evolution  of  human  nature  and  human  societies — Its  operation 
under  the  forms  of  revenge  and  moral  indignation  in  the 
maintenance  of  social  order — The  tendency  for  emulation  to 
supplant  pugnacity. 

CHAPTER  XII 

THE  GREGARIOUS  INSTINCT  . , . , 296-3OI 

The  pernicious  influence  of  its  crude  operation  among 
civilised  peoples — Its  subtler  operations  in  determining  the 
structure  of  society. 

CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  INSTINCTS  THROUGH  WHICH  RELIGIOUS  CONCEPTIONS 
AFFECT  SOCIAL  LIFE  . . . , . 302-321 

Fear — Subjection — Curiosity— The  parental  instinct — Their 
emotions  blended  in  admiration,  awe,  reverence — The  im- 
portance of  the  supernatural  sanctions  of  custom— How  the 


CONTENTS 


xvii 


PAGE 

tender  emotion  became  incorporated  in  the  sentiment  for  the 
Divine  power — Relation  of  religion  to  morality — Curiosity, 
the  source  ol  the  spirit  of  inquiry,  and  hence  of  science. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  INSTINCTS  OF  ACQUISITION  AND  CONSTRUCTION  . 322-324 

CHAPTER  XV 

IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  . . , • $25-351 

The  prime  condition  of  collective  mental  life — And  of  the 
persistence  and  growth  of  tradition — Imitation  as  agent  of 
social  conservation — Imitation  as  an  agent  of  progress — 

Play  as  socialising  influence — Habit — Its  role  in  social 
conservation. 

SUPPLEMENTARY  CHAPTER 

THEORIES  OF  ACTION  .....  $52 

The  theory  of  action  implied  in  foregoing  discussions — 

Other  theories  of  action — Psychological  Hedonism — The 
pleasure-pain  theory — The  ideo-motor  theory — Intuitional 
theories. 

Index  .......  385 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


L y]c  - Qj 


C-  ' Cxi'i/JXii-'.  Jju^- ■ 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


CHAPTER  I 


INTRODUCTION 


MONG  students  of  the  social  sciences  there  has 


always  been  a certain  number  who  have  recognised 
the  fact  that  some  knowledge  of  the  human  mind  and 
of  its  modes  of  operation  is  an  essential  part  of  their 
equipment,  and  that  the  successful  development  of  the 
social  sciences  must  be  dependent  upon  the  fulness  and 
accuracy  of  such  knowledge.  These  propositions  are  so 
obviously  true  that  any  formal  attempt  to  demonstrate 
them  is  superfluous.  Those  who  do  not  accept  them  as 
soon  as  they  are  made  will  not  be  convinced  of  their 
truth  by  any  chain  of  formal  reasoning.  It  is,  then,  a 
remarkable  fact  that  psychology,  the  science  which 
claims  to  formulate  the  body  of  ascertained  truths  about 
the  constitution  and  working  of  the  mind,  and  which 
endeavours  to  refine  and  to  add  to  this  knowledge, 
has  not  been  generally  and  practically  recognised  as  the 
essential  common  foundation  on  which  all  the  social 
sciences — ethics,  economics,  political  science,  philosophy 
of  history,  sociology,  and  cultural  anthropology,  and  the 
more  special  social  sciences,  such  as  the  sciences  of 
religion,  of  law,  of  education,  and  of  art — must  be  built 
up.  Of  the  workers  in  these  sciences,  some,  like  Comte, 


B 


2 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


and,  at  the  present  time,  M.  Durkheim,  repudiate  the 
claim  of  psychology  to  such  recognition.  Some  do  lip 
service  to  psychology,  but  in  practice  ignore  it,  and  will 
sit  down  to  write  a treatise  on  morals  or  economics,  or 
any  other  of  the  social  sciences,  cheerfully  confessing  that 
they  know  nothing  of  psychology.  A certain  number, 
perhaps  the  majority,  of  recent  writers  on  social  topics 
recognise  the  true  position  of  psychology,  but  in  practice 
are  content  to  take  as  their  psychological  foundations  the 
vague  and  extremely  misleading  psychology  embodied 
in  common  speech,  with  the  addition  of  a few  hasty 
assumptions  about  the  mind  made  to  suit  their  par- 
ticular purposes.  There  are  signs,  however,  that  this 
regrettable  state  of  affairs  is  about  to  pass  away,  that 
psychology  will  before  long  be  accorded  in  universal 
practice  the  position  at  the  base  of  the  social  sciences 
which  the  more  clear-sighted  have  long  seen  that  it 
ought  to  occupy. 

Since  this  volume  is  designed  to  promote  this  change 
of  practice,  it  is  fitting  that  it  should  open  with  a brief 
inquiry  into  the  causes  of  the  anomalous  state  of  affairs 
at  present  obtaining  and  with  some  indication  of  the 
way  in  which  it  is  hoped  that  the  change  may  be 
brought  about.  For  there  can  be  no  question  that  the 
lack  of  practical  recognition  of  psychology  by  the 
workers  in  the  social  sciences  has  been  in  the  main 
due  to  its  deficiencies,  and  that  the  only  way  of  esta- 
blishing it  in  its  true  place  is  to  make  good  these 
deficiencies.  What,  then,  are  these  deficiencies,  and 
why  have  they  so  long  persisted?  We  may  attempt 
very  briefly  to  indicate  the  answers  to  these  questions 
without  presuming  to  apportion  any  blame  for  the  long 
continuance  of  these  deficiencies  between  the  professed 
psychologists  and  the  workers  in  the  social  sciences. 

of  psychology  that  is  of  primary 


INTRODUCTION 


3 


importance  for  the  social  sciences  is  that  which  deals 
with  th^e  springs  of  human  action,  the  impulses  and 
motives  that  sustain  mental  and  bodily  activity  and 
regulate  conduct:  and  this,  of  all  the  departments  of 
(psychology,  is  the  one  that  has  remained  in  the  most 
backward  state,  in  which  the  greatest  obscurity,  vague- 
jness,  and  confusion  still  reign.  The  answers  to  such 
problems  as  the  proper  classification  of  conscious  states, 
the  analysis  of  them  into  their  elements,  the  nature  of 
these  elements  and  the  laws  of  the  compounding  of 
them,  have  but  little  bearing  upon  the  social  sciences; 
the  same  may  be  said  of  the  range  of  problems  con- 
nected with  the  relations  of  soul  and  body,  of  psychical 
and  physical  process,  of  consciousness  and  brain  pro- 
cesses ; and  also  of  the  discussion  of  the  more  purely 
intellectual  processes,  of  the  way  we  arrive  at  the  per- 
ception of  relations  of  time  and  place  or  of  likeness 
and  difference,  of  the  classification  and  description  of 
the  intellectual  processes  of  ideation,  conception,  com- 
parison, and  abstraction,  and  of  their  relations  to  one 
another.  /Not  these  processes  themselves,  but  only  the 
results  or  products  of  these  processes~the  knowledge 
or  system  of  ideas  and  beliefs  achieved  by  them, 
and  the  way  in  which  these  ideas  and  beliefs  regulate 
conduct  and  determine  social  institutions  and  the 
relations  of  men  to  one  another  in  society  are  of 
immediate  importance  for  the  social  sciences.  It  is  the 
mental  forces,  the  sources  of  energy,  which  set  the  ends 
and  sustain  the  course  of  all  human  activity — of  which 
forces  the  intellectual  processes  are  but  the  servants, 
instruments,  or  means — that  must  be  clearly  defined,  and 
whose  history  in  the  race  and  in  the  individual  must  be 
made  clear,  before  the  social  sciences  can  build  upon  a 
firm  psychological  foundation.  Now,  it  is  with  the 
questions  of  the  former  classes  that  psychologists  have 


4 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


chiefly  concerned  themselves  and  in  regard  to  which 
they  have  made  the  most  progress  towards  a consistent 
and  generally  acceptable  body  of  doctrine : and  they  have 
unduly  neglected  these  more  socially  important  problems. 

This  has  been  the  result  of  several  conditions,  a result 
which  we,  looking  back  upon  the  history  of  the  sciences, 
can  see  to  have  been  inevitable,  /it  was  inevitable  that, 
when  men  began  to  reflect  upon  the  complex  pheno- 
mena of  social  life,  they  should  have  concentrated 
their  attention  upon  the  problems  immediately  pre- 
sented, and  should  have  sought  to  explain  them  deduc- 
tively from  more  or  less  vaguely  conceived  principles 
that  they  entertained  they  knew  not  why  or  how, 
principles  that  were  the  formulations  of  popular  concep- 
tions, slowly  grown  up  in  the  course  of  countless  genera- 
tions and  rendered  more  explicit,  but  hardly  less  obscure, 
by  the  labours  of  theologians  and  metaphysicians.  And 
when,  in  the  eighteenth  century  and  the  early  part  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  the  modern  principles  of  scientific 
method  began  to  be  generally  accepted  and  to  be  applied 
to  all  or  most  objects  of  human  speculation,  and  the 
various  social  sciences  began  to  be  marked  off  from  one 
another  along  the  modern  lines,  it  was  inevitable  that 
the  workers  in  each  department  of  social  science  should 
have  continued  in  the  same  way,  attempting  to  explain 
social  phenomena  from  proximate  principles  which  they 
falsely  conceived  to  be  fundamental,  rather  than  to  obtain 
a deeper  knowledge  of  the  fundamental  constitution  of 
the  human  mind.  It  was  not  to  be  expected  that  genera- 
tions of  workers,  whose  primary  interest  it  was  to  lay 
down  general  rules  for  the  guidance  of  human  activity 
in  the  great  fields  of  legislation,  of  government,  of  private 
and  public  conduct,  should  have  deliberately  put  aside 
the  attempt  to  construct  the  sciences  of  these  depart- 
ments of  life,  leaving  them  to  the  efforts  of  after-coming 


INTRODUCTION 


5 


generations,  while  they  devoted  themselves  to  the  pre- 
paratory work  of  investigating  the  individual  mind,  in 
order  to  secure  the  basis  of  psychological  truth  on  which 
the  labours  of  their  successors  might  rear  the  social 
sciences.  The  problems  confronting  them  were  too 
urgent ; customs,  laws,  and  institutions  demanded 
theoretical  justification,  and  those  who  called  out  for 
social  reform  sought  to  strengthen  their  case  with 
theoretical  demonstrations  of  its  justice  and  of  its  con- 
formity with  the  accepted  principles  of  human  nature. 

And  even  if  these  early  workers  in  the  social  sciences 
had  made  this  impossible  self-denying  ordinance,  it 
would  not  have  been  possible  for  them  to  achieve  the 
psychology  that  was  needed.  /For  a science  still  more 
fundamental,  one  whose  connection  with  the  social 
phenomena  they  sought  to  explain  or  justify  was  still 
more  remote  and  obscure,  had  yet  to  be  created — 
namely,  the  science  of  biology.  It  is  only  a com- 
parative and  evolutionary  psychology  that  can  provide 
the  needed  basis  ; and  this  could  not  be  created  before 
the  work  of  Darwin  had  convinced  men  of  the  continuity 
of  human  with  animal  evolution  as  regards  all  bodily 
characters,  and  had  prepared  the  way  for  the  quickly 
following  recognition  of  the  similar  continuity  of  man's 
mental  evolution  with  that  of  the  animal  world. 

Hence  the  workers  in  each  of  the  social  sciences, 
approaching  their  social  problems  in  the  absence  of  any 
established  body  of  psychological  truth  and  being 
compelled  to  make  certain  assumptions  about  the  mind, 
made  them  ad  hoc ; and  in  this  way  they  provided  the 
indispensable  minimum  of  psychological  doctrine  re- 
quired by  each  of  them.  Many  of  these  assumptions 
contained  sufficient  truth  to  give  them  a certain  plausi- 
bility ; but  they  were  usually  of  such  a sweeping 
character  as  to  leave  no  room  for,  and  to  disguise  the 


6 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


need  for,  more  accurate  and  detailed  psychological 
analysis.  And  not  only  were  these  assumptions  made 
by  those  who  had  not  prepared  themselves  for  the  task 
by  long  years  of  study  of  the  mind  in  all  its  many 
aspects  and  by  the  many  possible  avenues  of  approach, 
but  they  were  not  made  with  the  single-hearted  aim  of 
discovering  the  truth ; rather  they  were  commonly 
made  under  the  bias  of  an  interest  in  establishing  some 
normative  doctrine  ; the  search  for  what  is  was  clogged 
and  misled  at  every  step  by  the  desire  to  establish  some 
preconceived  view  as  to  what  ought  to  be.  •^When,  then, 
psychology  began  very  slowly  and  gradually  to  assert 
its  status  as  an  independent  science,  it  found  all  that 
part  of  its  province  which  has  the  most  immediate  and 
important  bearing  on  the  social  sciences  already 
occupied  by  the  fragmentary  and  misleading  psycho- 
logical assumptions  of  the  workers  in  these  sciences ; 
and  these  workers  naturally  resented  all  attempts  of 
psychology  to  encroach  upon  the  territory  they  had 
learned  to  look  upon  as  their  own  ; for  such  attempts 
would  have  endangered  their  systems. 

/^he  psychologists,  endeavouring  to  define  their 
science  and  to  mark  it  off  from  other  sciences,  were 
thus  led  to  accept  a too  narrow  view  of  its  scope  and 
methods  and  applications.  They  were  content  for  the 
most  part  to  define  it  as  the  science  of  consciousness, 
land  to  regard  introspection  as  its  only  method  ; for  the 
introspective  ana^sis  _and  description  of  conscious 
.states  ^as  a part  of  the  proper  work  of  psychology 
I that  had  not  been  undertaken  by  any  other  of  the 
1 sciences.  The  insistence  upon  introspection  as  the  one 
method  of  the  science  tended  to  prolong  the  predomi- 
nance of  this  narrow  and  paralysing  view  of  the  scope 
of  the  science ; for  the  life  of  emotion  and  the  play 
of  motives  is  the  part  of  our  mental  life  which  offers  the 


INTRODUCTION 


7 


j least  advantageous  field  for  introspective  observation 
and  description.  The  cognitive  or  intellectual  processes, 
.on  the  other  hand,  present  a rich  and  varied  content  of 
consciousness  which  lends  itself  well  to  introspective 
discrimination,  analysis,  and  description ; in  comparison 
with  it,  the  emotional  and  conative  consciousness  has 
but  little  variety  of  content,  and  that  little  is  extremely 
obscure  and  elusive  of  introspection. 

Then,  shortly  after  the  Darwinian  ideas  had  re- 
volutionised the  biological  sciences,  and  when  it  might 
have  been  hoped  that  psychologists  would  have  been 
led  to  take  a wider  view  of  their  science  and  to  assert 
its  rights  to  its  whole  field,  the  introduction  of  the 
experimental  methods  of  introspection  absorbed  the 
energies  of  a large  proportion  of  the  workers  in  the 
re-survey,  by  the  new  and  more  accurate  methods,  of 
the  ground  already  worked  by  the  method  of  simple 
introspection. 

Let  us  note  some  instances  of  the  unfortunate  results 
of  this  premature  annexation  of  the  most  important  and 
obscure  region  of  psychology  by  the  sciences  which 
should,  in  the  logical  order  of  things,  have  found  the 
fundamental  psychological  truths  ready  to  their  hands 
as  a firm  basis  for  their  constructions. 

Ethics  affords  perhaps  the  most  striking  example  ; 
for  any  writer  on  this  subject  necessarily  encounters 
psychological  problems  on  every  hand,  and  treatises 
on  ethics  are  apt  to  consist  very  largely  of  amateur 
psychologising.  Among  the  earlier  moralists  ^ the  lack 
of  psychological  insight  led  to  such  doctrines  'hsNhat  of 
certain  Stoics,  to  the  effect  that  the  wise  and  good  man 
should  seek  to  eradicate  the  emotions  from  his  bosom ; 
w that  of  Kant,  to  the  effect  that  the  wise  and  good 
man  should  be  free  from  desire.  Putting  aside,  however, 
these  quaint  notions  of  the  earlier  writers,  we  may  note 


8 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


that  in  modern  times  three  false  and  hasty  assumptions 
of  the  kind  stigmatised  above  have  played  leading 
roles  and  have  furnished  a large  part  of  the  matter  with 
which  ethical  controversy  has  been  busied  during  the 
nineteenth  century.  First  in  importance  perhaps  as 
c^,  topic  for  controversy  was  the  doctrine  known  as 
psychological  hedonism,  the  doctrine  that  the  motives 
of  all  human  activity  are  the  desire  of  pleasure  and  the 
aversion  to  pain.^'^MHand  in  hand  with  this  went  the 
false  assumption  that  happiness  and  pleasure  are 
synonymous  terms.  These  two  false  assumptions  were 
adopted  as  the  psychological  foundation  of  utilitarianism ; 
they  rendered  that  doctrine  repugnant  to  many  of  the 
best  minds  and  drove  them  to  fall  back  upon  vague 
and  mystical  conceptions,  vuf  these  the  old  conception 
of  a special  faculty  of  moral  intuition,  a conscience,  a 
moral  sense  or  instinct,  was  the  most  important ; and 
this  was  the  third  of  the  trio  of  false  psychological 
assumptions  on  which  ethical  systems  were  based. 
Many  of  those  who  adopted  some  form  of  this  last 
assumption  were  in  the  habit  of  supplementing  it  by 
similar  assumptions  hastily  made  to  afford  explana- 
tions of  any  tendencies  they  noted  in  human  conduct 
which  their  master  principle  was  inadequate  to  meet ; 
they  postulated  strange  instincts  of  all  kinds  as  lightly 
and  easily  as  a conjurer  produces  eggs  from  a hat  or  a 
phrenologist  discovers  bumps  on  a head. 

■2^'^  It  is  instructive  to  note  that  as  recently  as  the  year 
1893  the  late  Professor  H.  Sidgwick,  one  of  the  leaders 
of  the  ethical  thought  of  his  time,  still  inverted  the  pro- 
blem ; like  his  predecessors  he  assumed  that  moral  or 
reasonable  action  is  normal  and  natural  to  man  in  virtue 
of  some  vaguely  conceived  principle,  and  in  all  serious- 
ness wrote  an  article  ^ to  prove  that  “ unreasonable 
’ “ Unreasonable  Action,”  Mind,  N.S.,  vol.  iii. 


INTRODUCTION 


9 


action”  is  possible  and  is  actually  achieved  occasionally, 
and  to  explain  if  possible  this  strange  anomalous  fact. 
He  quotes  Bentham’s  dictum  that  ‘‘  on  the  occasion 
of  every  act  he  exercises  every  human  being  is  led  to 
pursue  that  line  of  conduct  which,  according  to  his 
view  of  the  case,  taken  by  him  at  the  moment,  will  be 
in  the  highest  degree  contributory  to  his  own  greatest 
happiness.”  He  points  out  that,  although  J.  S.  Mill 
admitted  certain  exceptions  to  this  principle,  his 
general  view  was  that  ‘‘to  desire  anything,  except 
in  proportion  as  the  idea  of  it  is  pleasant,  is  a physical 
impossibility.”  So  that,  according  to  this  school,  any 
action  of  an  individual  that  does  not  tend  to  produce 
for  him  the  maximum  of  pleasure  can  only  arise  from 
an  error  of  judgment  as  to  the  relative  quantities  of 
pleasure  that  will  be  secured  by  different  lines  of  action. 
And,  since,  according  to  this  school,  all  actions  ought  to 
be  directed  to  securing  a maximum  of  pleasure,  action 
of  any  other  kind  is  not  only  unreasonable  action,  but 
also  immoral  action  ; for  it  is  action  in  a way  other 
than  the  way  in  which  the  individual  knows  he  ought 
to  act.  Sidgwick  then  goes  on  to  show  that  the 
doctrine  that  unreasonable  action  (or  wilful  action  not 
in  accordance  with  what  the  individual  knows  that  he 
ought  to  do)  is  exceptional,  paradoxical,  or  abnormal 
is  not  peculiar  to  the  utilitarians,  but  is  common  also  to 
their  opponents  ; he  takes  as  an  example  T.  H.  Green, 
who  “still  lays  down  as  broadly  as  Bentham  that 
every  person  in  every  moral  action,  virtuous  or  vicious, 
presents  to  himself  some  possible  state  or  achieve- 
ment of  his  own  as  for  the  time  his  greatest  good, 
and  acts  for  the  sake  of  that  good,  and  that  this  is 
how  he  ought  to  act.”  So  that  Green  only  differs 
from  Bentham  and  Mill  in  putting  good  in  the  place 
of  pleasure,  and  for  the  rest  makes  the  same  grotesquely 


lO 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


false  assumption  as  they  do.  Sidgwick  then,  instead  of 
attacking  and  rejecting  as  radically  false  the  concep- 
tion of  human  motives  common  to  both  classes  of 
his  predecessors,  goes  on  in  all  seriousness  to  offer  a 
psychological  explanation  of  the  paradox  that  men 
do  sometimes  act  unreasonably  and  otherwise  than  they 
ought  to  act.  That  is  to  say,  Sidgwick,  like  those 
whom  he  criticises,  accepts  the  doctrine  that  men 
normally  and  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases  act  reason- 
ably and  as  they  ought  to  act,  in  virtue  of  some 
unexplained  principle  of  their  constitution,  and  defines 
as  a problem  for  solution  the  fact  that  they  sometimes 
act  otherwise.  But  the  truth  is  that  men  are  moved 
by  a variety  of  impulses  whose  nature  has  been 
determined  through  long  ages  of  the  evolutionary 
process  without  reference  to  the  life  of  men  in  civilised 
societies ; and  the  psychological  problem  we  have  to 
solve,  and  with  which  this  book  is  mainly  concerned, 
is — How  can  we  account  for  the  fact  that  men  so 
moved  ever  come  to  act  as  they  ought,  or  morally 
and  reasonably? 

One  is  driven  to  suppose  that  the  minds  of  the  moral 
philosophers  who  maintain  these  curious  views  as  to  the 
sources  and  nature  of  human  conduct  are  either  consti- 
tutionally devoid  of  the  powerful  impulses  that  so  often 
move  ordinary  men  to  actions  which  they  know  to 
be  morally  wrong  and  against  their  true  interests  and 
destructive  of  their  happiness,  or  so  completely  moralised 
by  strict  self-discipline  that  these  powerful  impulses  are 
completely  subordinated  and  hardly  make  themselves 
felt.  But,  if  either  alternative  is  true,  it  is  unfortunate 
that  their  peculiar  constitutions  should  have  led  these 
philosophers  to  base  the  social  sciences  on  profoundly 
fallacious  psychological  doctrines. 

Political  economy  suffered  hardly  less  from  the  crude 


INTRODUCTION 


II 


nature  of  the  psychological  assumptions  from  which  it 
professed  to  deduce  the  explanations  of  Jts  facts  and  its 
prescriptions  for  economic  legislation,  pit  would  be  a 
libel,  not  altogether  devoid  of  truth,  to  say  that  the 
classical  political  economy  was  a tissue  of  false  con- 
vClusions  drawn  from  false  psychological  assumptions. 
l(Knd  certainly  the  recent  progress  in  economic  doctrine 
has  largely  consisted  in,  or  resulted  from,  the  recognition 
of  the  need  for  a less  inadequate  psychological  basis. 
An  example  illustrating  these  two  facts  will  be  not 
out  of  place.  /^Tlie  gr^at  assumption  of  the  classical 
political  economy  was  that  man  is  a reasonable  being 
■^who  always  intelligently  seeks  his  own  good  or  is 
guided  in  all  his  activities  by  enlightened  self-interest ; 
and  this  was  usually  combined  with  the  psychological 
hedonism  which  played  so  large  a part  in  degrading 
utilitarian  ethics ; that  is  to  say,  good  was  identified 
with  pleasure.  From  these  assumptions,  which  con- 
tained sufficient  truth  to  be  plausible,  it  was  deduced^ 
logically  enough,  that  free  competition  in  an  open 
market  will  secure  a supply  of  goods  at_the  lowest 
possible  rate.  But  mankind  is  only  a little  bit  reason- 
able and  to  a great  extent  very  unintelligently  moved 
in  quite  unreasonable  ways.  The  economists  had 
neglected  to  tj^e  account  of  the  suggestibility  of  men 
which  renders  the  arts  of  the  advertiser,  of  the  “pushing” 
of  goods  generally,  so  profitable  and  effective.  Only  on 
taking  this  character  of  men  into  account  can  we  under- 
stand such  facts  as  that  sewing  machines,  which  might 
be  sold  at  a fair  profit  for  find  a large  sale  at  £12^ 
while  equally  good  ones  are  sold  in  the  same  market  at 
less  than  half  the  price.  The  same  deduction  as  to 
competition  and  prices  has  been  signally  falsified  by 
those  cases  in  which  the  establishment  by  trusts  or  cor- 
porations of  virtual  monopolies  in  articles  of  universal 


12 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


consumption  has  led  to  a reduction  of  the  market  prices 
of  those  commodities ; or  again,  by  the  fact  that  so 
enormous  a proportion  of  the  price  paid  for  goods  goes 
into  the  pockets  of  small  shopkeepers  and  other 
economically  pernicious  middlemen. 

As  an  example  of  the  happy  effect  of  the  recent 
introduction  of  less  crude  psychology  into  economic 
discussions,  it  will  suffice  to  mention  Mrs.  Bosanquet’s 
work  on  “ The  Standard  of  Life.” 

3)  In  political  science  no  less  striking  illustrations  may 
be  found.  What  other  than  an  error  due  to  false 
psychological  assumptions  was  the  cosmopolitanism  of 
the  Manchester  school,  with  its  confident  prophecy  of 
the  universal  brotherhood  of  man  brought  about  by 
enlightened  self-interest  assigning  to  each  region  and 
people  the  work  for  which  it  was  best  suited?  This 
prophecy  has  been  notoriously  falsified  by  a great  out- 
Ijurst  of  national  spirit,  which  has  played  the  chief  part 
in  shaping  European  history  during  the  last  half- 
century. 

Again,  in  the  philosophy  of  history  we  have  the  same 
method  of  deduction  from  hasty,  incomplete,  and  mis- 
leading, if  not  absolutely  false,  assumptions  as  to  the 
human  mind.  We  may  take  as  a fair  example  the 
assumptions  that  V.  Cousin  made  the  foundation  of  his 
philosophy  of  history.  Cousin,  after  insisting  strongly 
upon  the  fundamental  importance  of  psychological 
analysis  for  the  interpretation  of  history,  proceeds  as 
follows : * “ The  various  manifestations  and  phases  of 
social  life  are  all  traced  back  to  tendencies  of  human 
nature  from  which  they  spring,  from  five  fundamental 
wants  each  of  which  has  corresponding  to  it  a general 
idea.  The  idea  of  the  useful  gives  rise  to  mathematical 

• I quote  from  Professor  Flint’s  “ History  of  the  Philosophy  of 
History,”  p.  456. 


INTRODUCTION 


13 


and  physical  science,  industry,  and  political  economy ; 
the  idea  of  the  just  to  civil  society,  the  State,  and  juris- 
prudence ; the  idea  of  the  beautiful  to  art ; the  idea  of 
God  to  religion  and  worship  ; and  the  idea  of  truth  in 
itself,  in  its  highest  degree  and  under  its  purest  form,  to 
philosophy.  These  ideas  are  argued  to  be  simple  and 
indecomposable,  to  coexist  in  every  mind,  to  constitute 
the  whole  foundation  of  humanity,  and  to  follow  in  the 
order  mentioned.^'  No  better  illustration  of  the  truth  of 
the  foregoing  remarks  could  be  found.  We  have  here 
the  spectacle  of  a philosopher,  who  exerted  a great 
influence  on  the  thought  of  his  own  country,  and  who 
rightly  conceived  the  relation  of  psychology  to  the  social 
sciences,  but  who,  in  the  absence  of  any  adequate  psy- 
chology, contents  himself  with  concocting  on  the  spur 
of  the  moment  the  most  flimsy  substitute  for  it  in  the 
form  of  these  five  assumptions. 

As  for  the  philosophies  of  history  that  make  no 
pretence  of  a psychological  foundation,  they  are  suffi- 
ciently characterised  by  M.  Fouillee  who,  when  writing 
of  the  development  of  sociology,  says:  “Elle  est  nee 
en  effet  d'une  etude  en  grande  partie  mythique  ou 
poetique  : je  veux  parler  de  la  philosophie  de  Thistoire 
telle  que  les  metaphysiciens  ou  les  th^ologiens  Tont 
d’abord  confue,  et  qui  est  a la  sociologie  positive  ce  que 
Talchimie  fut  a la  chimie,  Tastrologie  a Tastronomie.”  ^ 
From  the  science  of  jurisprudence  we  may  take,  as  a 
last  illustration,  the  retributive  doctrine  of  punishment, 
which  is  still  held  by  a considerable  number  of  writers. 
This  barbarous  conception  of  the  grounds  on  which 
punishment  is  justified  arises  naturally  from  the  doctrine 
of  free-will ; to  any  one  who  holds  this  doctrine  in  any 
thorough-going  form  there  can  be  no  other  rational 
view  of  punishment  than  the  retributive ; for  since, 
* La  Science  Sociale  Contemporaine/’  p.  380.  Paris,  1904. 


14 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


according  to  this  assumption,  where  human  action  is 
concerned,  the  future  course  of  events  is  not  determined 
/ by  the  present,  punishment  cannot  be  administered  in 
» the  forward-looking  attitude  with  a view  to  deterrence 
or  to  moral  improvement,  but  only  in  the  backward- 
looking vengeful  attitude  of  retribution.  The  fuller 
becomes  our  insight  into  the  springs  of  human  conduct, 
the  more  impossible  does  it  become  to  maintain  this 
antiquated  doctrine  ; so  that  here,  too,  progress  depends 
upon  the  improvement  of  psychology. 

One  might  take  each  of  the  social  sciences  in  turn 
and  illustrate  in  each  case  the  great  need  for  a true 
doctrine  of  human  motives.  But,  instead  of  doing  that, 
I will  merely  sum  up  on  the  issue  of  the  work  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  as  follows  : — During  the  last  century  most 
of  the  workers  in  the  social  sciences  were  of  two  parties — 
those  on  the  one  hand  who  with  the  ultilitarians  reduced 
all  motives  to  the  search  for  pleasure  and  the  avoidance 
of  pain,  and  those  on  the  other  hand  who,  recoiling 
from  this  hedonistic  doctrine,  sought  the  mainspring  of 
conduct  in  some  vaguely  conceived  intuitive  faculty 
variously  named  the  conscience,  the  moral  faculty,  in- 
stinct, or  sense.  Before  the  close  of  the  century  the 
doctrines  of  both  of  these  parties  were  generally  seen 
to  be  fallacious ; but  no  satisfactory  substitute  for  them 
was  generally  accepted,  and  by  the  majority  of  psycho- 
logists nothing  better  was  offered  to  fill  the  gap  than 
a mere  word,  “ the  will,”  or  some  such  phrase  as  “ the 
tendency  of  ideas  to  self-realisation.”  On  the  other  hand, 
Oj^Darwin,  in  the  “ Descent  of  Man  ” (1871)  first  enunciated 
the  true  doctrine  of  human  motives,  and  showed  how 
we  must  proceed,  relying  chiefly  upon  the  comparative 
and  natural  history  method,  if  we  would  arrive  at  a 
fuller  understanding  of  them,  But  Darwin's  own  account 
suffered  from  the  deference  he  paid^  under  protest,  to 


INTRODUCTION 


IS 


the  doctrine  of  psychological  hedonism,  still  dominant  at 
that  time ; and  his  lead  has  been  followed  by  compara- 
tively few  psychologists,  and  but  little  has  yet  been  done 
to  carry  forward  the  work  he  began  and  to  refine  upon 
his  first  rough  sketch  of  the  history  of  human  motives. 

Enough  has  been  said  to  illustrate  the  point  of  view 
from  which  this  volume  has  been  written,  and  to  enforce 
the  theme  of  this  introductory  chapter,  namely,  that 
psychologists  must  cease  to  be  content  with  the  sterile 
and  narrow  conception  of  their  science  as  the  science 
of  consciousness,  and  must  boldly  assert  its  claim  to  be 
the  positive  science  of  the  mind  in  all  its  aspects  and 
modes  of  functioning,  or,  as  I would  prefer  to  say,  the 
positive  science  of  conduct  or  behaviour.^  Psychology 
must  not  regard  the  introspective  description  of  the 
stream  of  consciousness  as  its  whole  task,  but  only  as  a 
preliminary  part  of  its  work.  Such  introspective  de- 
scription, such  “ pure  psychology,^'  can  never  constitute 
a science,  or  at  least  can  never  rise  to  the  level  of  an 
explanatory  science  ; and  it  can  never  in  itself  be  of  any 
great  value  to  the  social  sciences.  The  basis  required 
by  all  of  them  is  a comparative  and  physiological 
psychology  relying  largely  on  objective  methods,  the 
observation  of  the  behaviour  of  men  and  of  animals  of 
all  varieties  under  all  possible  conditions  of  health  and 
disease.  It  must  take  the  largest  possible  view  of  its 
scope  and  functions,  and  must  be  an  evolutionary  natural 
history  of  mind.  Above  all,  it  must  aim  at  providing  a full 
and  accurate  account  of  those  most  fundamental  elements 
of  our  constitution,  the  innate  tendencies  to  thought  and 
action  that  constitute  the  native  basis  of  the  mind. 

Happily  this  more  generous  conception  of  psychology 
is  beginning  to  prevail.  The  mind  is  no  longer  regarded 

* This  definition  of  psychology  was  proposed  in  my  Primer 
of  Physiological  Psychology,’*  London,  1905, 


i6 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


as  a mere  tabula  rasa  or  magic  mirror  whose  function  it 
is  passively  to  receive  impressions  from  the  outer  world 
or  to  throw  imperfect  reflections  of  its  objects — " a row 
of  moving  shadow-shapes  that  come  and  go.”  Nor  are 
we  any  longer  content  to  supplement  this  Lockian  con- 
ception of  mind  with  only  two  principles  of  intrinsic 
activity,  that  of  the  association  and  reproduction  of 
ideas,  and  that  of  the  tendency  to  seek  pleasure  and  to 
avoid  pain.  The  discovery  is  being  made  that  the  old 
psychologising  was  like  the  playing  of  “ Hamlet  ” with 
the  Prince  of  Denmark  left  out,  or  like  describing  steam- 
engines  while  ignoring  the  fact  of  the  presence  and 
fundamental  role  of  the  fire  or  other  source  of  heat.  On 
every  hand  we  hear  it  said  that  the  static,  descriptive, 
purely  analytic  psychology  must  give  place  to  a dynamic, 
functional,  voluntaristic  view  of  mind. 
xr)  A second  very  important  advance  of  psychology 
towards  usefulness  is  due  to  the  increasing  recognition 
of  the  extent  to  which  the  adult  human  mind  is  the 
product  of  the  moulding  influence  exerted  by  the  social 
environment,  and  of  the  fact  that  the  strictly  individual 
human  mind,  with  which  alone  the  older  introspective 
and  descriptive  psychology  concerned  itself,  is  an 
abstraction  merely  and  has  no  real  existence. 

It  is  needless  to  attempt  to  describe  the  many  and 
complex  influences  through  which  these  changes  are 
being  effected.  It  suffices  to  note  the  happy  .fact  and 
briefly  to  indicate  the  wav  in  which  this  book  aims 
to  contribute  its  mite  towards  the  building  up  of  a 
psychology  that  will  at  last  furnish  the  much  needed 
basis  of  the  social  sciences  and  of  the  comprehensive 
science  of  sociology.^  The  first  section  begins  with  the 
elucidation  of  that  part  of  the  native  basis  of  the  mind 
which  is  the  source  of  all  our  bodily  and  mental 
activity.  In  Chapter  II.  I have  attempted  to  render  as 


INTRODUCTION 


17 


clear  and  definite  as  possible  the  conception  of  an 
instinct,  and  to  make  clear  the  relation  of  instinct  to 
mental  process  and  the  fundamental  importance  of  the 
instincts  ; in  the  third  chapter  I have  sought  to  enu- 
merate and  briefly  to  define  the  principal  human  in- 
stincts ; and  in  the  fourth  I have  defined  certain  general 
functional  tendencies  which,  though  they  are  sometimes 
classed  with  the  instincts,  are  of  a different  nature.  I 
have  not  thought  it  necessary  to  make  any  elaborate 
criticism,  of  psychological  hedonism,  as  that  doctrine  is 
now  sufficiently  exploded.  In  the  following  chapters  of 
this  section  I have  attempted  to  describe  in  general 
terms  the  way  in  which  these  native  tendencies  of  our 
constitution  co-operate  to  determine  the  course  of  the 
life  of  emotion  and  action  ; to  show  how,  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  social  environment,  they  become  gradually 
organised  in  systems  of  increasing  complexity,  while 
they  remain  unchanged  as  regards  their  most  essential 
attributes  ; to  show  that,  although  it  is  no  longer  easy  to 
trace  to  their  source  the  complex  manifestations  of 
human  character  and  will,  it  is  nevertheless  possible  to 
sketch  in  rough  outline  the  course  of  this  development 
and  to  exhibit  human  volition  of  the  highest  moral  type 
as  but  a more  complex  conjunction  of  the  mental  forces 
which  we  may  trace  in  the  evolutionary  scale  far  back 
into  the  animal  kingdom. 

This  first  section  of  the  book  deals,  then,  with  the 
characters  of  the  individual  mind  that  are  of  prime 
importance  for  the  social  life  of  man.  Of  this  section 
it  might  be  said  that  it  is  not  properly  a part  of  a social 
psychology.  Nevertheless  it  is  an  indispensable  prelimi- 
nary of  all  social  psychology,  and,  since  no  consistent 
and  .generally  acceptable  scheme  of  this  kind  has 
hitherto  been  furnished,  it  was  necessary  to  attempt  it. 

It  may  even  be  contended  that  it  deals  with  the  funda- 

' c 


I8 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


mental  problem  of  social  psychology.  For  social 
psychology  has  to  show  how,  given  the  native  pro- 
pensities and  capacities  of  the  individual  human  mind, 
all  the  complex  mental  life  of  societies  is  shaped  by 
them  and  in  turn  reacts  upon  the  course  of  their 
development  and  operation  in  the  individual.  And  of 
this  task  the  primary  and  most  essential  part  is  the 
showing  how  the  life  of  highly  organised  societies, 
involving  as  it  does  high  moral  qualities  of  character 
and  conduct  on  the  part  of  the  great  mass  of  men,  is  at 
all  possible  to  creatures  that  have  been  evolved  from 
the  animal  world,  whose  nature  bears  so  many  of  the 
marks  of  this  animal  origin,  and  whose  principal 
springs  of  activity  are  essentially  similar  to  those  of  the 
higher  animals.  For,  as  Dr.  Rashdall  well  says,  “ the  raw 
material,  so  to  speak,  of  Virtue  and  Vice  is  the  same — 
i.e.,  desires  which  in  themselves,  abstracted  from  their 
relation  to  the  higher  self,  are  not  either  moral  or 
immoral  but  simply  non-moral.”  * That  is  to  say,  the 
fundamental  problem  of  social  psychology  is  the  morali- 
sation  of  the  individual  by  the  society  into  which  he  is 
born  as  a creature  in  which  the  non-moral  and  purely 
egoistic  tendencies  are  so  much  stronger  than  any 
altruistic  tendencies. ^This  moralisation  or  socialisation  of 
the  individual  is,  then,  the  essential  theme  of  this  section. 

In  Section  II.  I have  briefly  indicated  some  of  the 
ways  in  which  the  principal  instincts  and  primary 
tendencies  of  the  human  mind  play  their  parts  in  the 
lives  of  human  societies  ; my  object  being  to  bring  home 
to  the  reader  the  truth  that  the  understanding  of  the 
life  of  society  in  any  or  all  of  its  phases  presupposes 
a knowledge  of  the  constitution  of  the  human  mind,  a 
truth  which,  though  occasionally  acknowledged  in 
principle,  is  in  practice  so  frequently  ignored. 

* “ The  Theory  of  Good  and  Evil,”  vol.  ii.  p.  73.  Oxford,  1907. 


SECTION  I 


THE  MENTAL  CHARACTERS  OF  MAN  OF 
PRIMARY  IMPORTANCE  FOR  HIS  LIFE  IN 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS  AND  THEIR  PLACE 
IN  THE  CONSTITUTION  OF  THE  HUMAN  MIND 

HE  human  mind  has  certain  innate  or  inherited 


tendencies  which  are  the  essential  sorinsfs  or 
motive  powers  of  all  thought  and  action,  whether 
individual  or  collective,  and  are  the  bases  from  which 
the  character  and  will  of  individuals  and  of  nations  are 
gradually  developed  under  the  guidance  of  the  in- 
tellectual faculties.  These  primary  innate  tendencies 
have  different  relative  strengths  in  the  native  constitu- 
tions of  the  individuals  of  different  races,  and  they  are 
favoured  or  checked  in  very  different  degrees  by  the 
very  different  social  circumstances  of  men  in  different 
stages  of  culture;  but  they  are  probably  common  to 
the  men  of  every  race  and  of  every  age.  If  this  view, 
that  human  nature  has  everywhere  and  at  all  times 
this  common  native  foundation,  can  be  established, 
it  will  afford  a much-needed  basis  for  speculation  on 
the  history  of  the  development  of  human  societies  and 
human  institutions.  For  so  long  as  it  is  possible  to 


SOCIETY 


CHAPTER  II 


20 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


assume,  as  has  often  been  done,  that  these  innate 
tendencies  of  the  human  mind  have  varied  greatly  from 
age  to  age  and  from  race  to  race,  all  such  speculation  is 
founded  on  quicksand  and  we  cannot  hope  to  reach 
views  of  a reasonable  degree  of  certainty. 

The  evidence  that  the  native  basis  of  the  human 
mind,  constituted  by  the  sum  of  these  innate  tendencies, 
has  this  stable  unchanging  character  is  afforded  by 
comparative  psychology.  For  we  find,  not  only  that 
these  tendencies,  in  stronger  or  weaker  degree,  are 
present  in  men  of  all  races  now  living  on  the  earth,  but 
that  we  may  find  all  of  them,  or  at  least  the  germs 
of  them,  in  most  of  the  higher  animals.  Hence  there 
can  be  little  doubt  that  they  played  the  same  essential 
part  in  the  minds  of  the  primitive  human  stock,  or 
stocks,  and  in  the  pre-human  ancestors  that  bridged  the 
great  gap  in  the  evolutionary  series  between  man  and 
the  animal  world. 

These  all-important  and  relatively  unchanging  ten- 
dencies, which  form  the  basis  of  human  character  and 
will,  are  of  two  main  classes — 

(1)  The  specific  tendencies  or  instincts  ; 

(2)  The  general  or  non-specific  tendencies  arising  out 
of  the  constitution  of  mind  and  the  nature  of  mental 
process  in  general,  when  mind  and  mental  process 
attain  a certain  degree  of  complexity  in  the  course  of 
[evolution. 

In  the  present  and  seven  following  chapters  I propose 
to  define  the  more  important  of  these  specific  and 
general  tendencies,  and  to  sketch  very  briefly  the  way  in 
which  they  become  systematised  in  the  course  of  char- 
acter-formation ; and  in  the  second  section  of  this  volume 
some  attempt  will  be  made  to  illustrate  the  special 
importance  of  each  one  for  the  social  life  of  man. 

Contemporary  writers  of  all  classes  make  frequent  use 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS 


21 


of  the  words  “ instinct  ” and  “ instinctive,”  but,  with  very 
few  exceptions,  they  use  them  so  loosely  that  they  have 
almost  spoilt  them  for  scientific  purposes.  On  the  one 
hand,  the  adjective  “ instinctive  ” is  commonly  applied  to 
every  human  action  that  is  performed  without  deliberate 
reflexion  ; on  the  other  hand,  the  actions  of  animals  are 
popularly  attributed  to  instinct,  and  in  this  connexion 
instinct  is  vaguely  conceived  as  a mysterious  faculty, 
utterly  different  in  nature  from  any  human  faculty, 
which  Providence  has  given  to  the  brutes  because  the 
higher  faculty  of  reason  has  been  denied  them.  Hun- 
dreds of  passages  might  be  quoted  from  contemporary 
authors,  even  some  of  considerable  philosophical  culture, 
to  illustrate  how  these  two  words  are  used  with  a mini- 
mum of  meaning,  generally  with  the  effect  of  disguising 
from  the  writer  the  obscurity  and  incoherence  of  his 
thought.  The  following  examples  will  serve  to  illus- 
trate at  once  this  abuse  and  the  hopeless  laxity  with 
which  even  cultured  authors  .habitually  make._U3fi,.  Qf 
psychological  terms.  ' One  philosophical  writer  on  social 
topics  tells  us  that  the  power  of  the  State  “ is  dependent 
on  the  instinct  of  subordination,  which  is  the  outcome  of 
the  desire  of  the  people,  more  or  less  distinctly  con- 
ceived, for  certain  social  ends”:  another  asserts  that 
ancestor-worship  has  survived  amongst  the  Western 
peoples  as  a “ mere  tradition  and  instinct  ” : a medical 
writer  has  recently  asserted  that  if  a drunkard  is  fed  on 
fruit  he  will  “become  instinctively  a teetotaler”:  a 
political  writer  tells  us  that  “the  Russian  people  is 
rapidly  acquiring  a political  instinct”:  from  a recent 
treatise  on  morals  by  a distinguished  philosopher  two 
passages,  fair  samples  of  a large  number,  may  be  taken  ; 
one  describes  the  “ notion  that  blood  demands  blood  ” 
as  an  “ inveterate  instinct  of  primitive  humanity  ” ; the 
other  affirms  that  “ punishment  originates  in  the  instinct 


22 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


of  vengeance”:  another  of  our  most  distinguished 
philosophers  asserts  that  “ popular  instinct  maintains  ” 
that  “there  is  a theory  and  a justification  of  social 
coercion  latent  in  the  term  ‘self-government.’”  As  our 
last  illustration  we  may  take  the  following  passage  from 
an  avowedly  psychological  article  in  a recent  number  of 
the  Spectator:  “The  instinct  of  contradiction,  like  the 
instinct  of  acquiescence,  is  inborn.  . . . These  instincts 
are  very  deep-rooted  and  absolutely  incorrigible,  either 
from  within  or  from  without.  Both  springing  as  they 
do  from  a radical  defect,  from  a want  of  original  inde- 
pendence, they  affect  the  whole  mind  and  character.” 
These  are  favourable  examples  of  current  usage,  and  they 
justify  the  statement  that  these  words  “ instinct”  and  “in- 
stinctive ” are  commonly  used  as  a cloak  for  ignorance 
when  a writer  attempts  to  explain  any  individual  or 
collective  action  that  he  fails,  or  has  not  tried,  to  under- 
stand. Yet  there  can  be  no  understanding  of  the 
development  of  individual  character  or  of  individual  and 
collective  conduct  unless  the  nature  of  instinct  and  its 
scope  and  function  in  the  human  mind  are  clearly  and 
firmly  grasped. 

f It  would  be  difficult  to  find  any  adequate  mention  of 
I instincts  in  treatises  on  human  psychology  written 
' before  the  middle  of  last  century.  But  the  work  of 
Darwin  and  of  Herbert  Spencer  has  lifted  to  some 
extent  the  veil  of  mystery  from  the  instincts  of  animals, 
and  has  made  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  instinct  to 
human  intelligence  and  conduct  one  of  the  most  widely 
discussed  in  recent  years. 

f Among  professed  psychologists  there  is  now  fair 
agreement  as  to  the  usage  of  the  terms  “ instinct  ” and 
“ instinctive.”  By  the  great  majority  they  are  used  only 
to  denote  certain  innate  specific  tendencies  of  the  mind 
that  are  common  to  all  members  of  any  one  species, 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS 


23 


racial  characters  that  have  been  slowly  evolved  in  the 
process  of  adaptation  of  species  to  their  environment 
and  that  can  be  neither  eradicated  from  the  mental 
constitution  of  which  they  are  innate  elements  nor 
acquired  by  individuals  in  the  course  of  their  lifetime. 
A few  writers,  of  whom  Professor  Wundt  is  the  most 
prominent,  apply  the  terms  to  the  very  strongly  fixed, 
acquired  habits  of  action  that  are  more  commonly  and 
properly  described  as  secondarily  automatic  actions,  as 
well  as  to  the  innate  specific  tendencies.  The  former 
usage  seems  in  every  way  preferable  and  is  adopted  in 
these  pages. 

But,  even  among  those  psychologists  who  use  the 
terms  in  this  stricter  sense^^here  are  still  great  differences 
of  opinion  as  to  the  place  of  instinct  in  the  human 
mind.  All  agree  that  man  has  been  evolved  from  pre- 
human ancestors  whose  lives  were  dominated  by  in- 
stincts ;\ut  some  hold  that,  as  man’s  intelligence  and 
reasoning  powers  developed,  his  instincts  atrophied, 
until  now  in  civilised  man  instincts  persist  only  as 
troublesome  vestiges  of  his  pre-human  state,  vestiges 
that  are  comparable  to  the  vermiform  appendix  and 
which,  like  the  latter,  might  with  advantage  be  removed 
by  the  surgeon’s  knife,  if  that  were  at  all  possible, 
'others  assign  them  a more  prominent  place  in  the 
constitution  of  the  human  mind  ; for  they  see  that 
intelligence,  as  it  increased  with  the  evolution  of  the 
higher  animals  and  of  man,  did  not  supplant  and  so 
lead  to  the  atrophy  of  the  instincts,  but  rather  controlled 
and  modified  their  operation ; and  some,  like  G.  H. 
Schneider^  and  William  James,^  maintain  that  man  has 
at  least  as  many  instincts  as  any  of  the  animals,  and 
assign  them  a leading  part  in  the  determination  of 

• “ Der  thierische  Wille.”  Leipzig,  i88o. 

• “ Principles  of  Psychology,”  London,  i8gr. 


24 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


human  conduct  and  mental  process.  This  last  view  is 
now  rapidly  gaining  ground ; and  this  volume,  I hope, 
may  contribute  in  some  slight  degree  to  promote  the 
recognition  of  the  full  scope  and  function  of  the  human 
instincts ; for  this  recognition  will,  I feel  sure,  appear 
to  those  who  come  after  us  as  the  most  important 
advance  made  by  psychology  in  our  time. 

'Instinctive  actions  are  displayed  in  their  purest  form 
by  animals  not  very  high  in  the  scale  of  intelligence. 
In  the  higher  vertebrate  animals  few  instinctive  modes 
of  behaviour  remain  purely  instinctive — i.e.y  unmodi- 
fied by  intelligence  and  by  habits  acquired  under  the 
guidance  of  intelligence  or  by  imitation.  And  even 
the  human  infant,  whose  intelligence  remains  but  little 
developed  for  so  many  months  after  birth,  performs  few 
purely  instinctive  actions;  because  in  the  human  being 
the  instincts,  although  innate,  are,  with  few  exceptions, 
undeveloped  in  the  first  months  of  life,  and  only  ripen, 
or  become  capable  of  functioning,  at  various  periods 
throughout  the  years  from  infancy  to  puberty. 

■'^insect  life  affords  perhaps  the  most  striking  examples 
of  purely  instinctive  action.  There  are  many  instances 
of  insects  that  invariably  lay  their  eggs  in  the  only 
places  where  the  grubs,  when  hatched,  will  find  the  food 
they  need  and  can  eat,  or  where  the  larvae  will  be  able 
to  attach  themselves  as  parasites  to  some  host  in  a way 
that  is  necessary  to  their  survival.  In  such  cases  it  is 
clear  that  the  behaviour  of  the  parent  is  determined  by 
the  impressions  made  on  its  senses  by  the  appropriate 
objects  or  places  : e.g.,  the  smell  of  decaying  flesh  leads 
the  carrion-fly  to  deposit  its  eggs  upon  it ; the  sight  or 
odour  of  some  particular  flower  leads  another  to  lay  its 
eggs  among  the  ovules  of  the  flower,  which  serve  as  food 
to  the  grubs.  Others  go  through  more  elaborate  trains 
of  action,  as  when  the  mason-wasp  lays  its  eggs  in  a 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS 


25 


mud-nest,  fills  up  the  space  with  caterpillars,  which  it 
paralyses  by  means  of  well-directed  stings,  and  seals  it 
up ; so  that  the  caterpillars  remain  as  a supply  of  fresh 
animal  food  for  the  young  which  the  parent  will  never 
see  and  of  whose  needs  it  can  have  no  knowledge  or  idea, 
-/^mong  the  lower  vertebrate  animals  also  instinctive 
actions,  hardly  at  all  modified  by  intelligent  control,  are 
common.  The  young  chick  runs  to  his  mother  in 
response  to  a call  of  peculiar  quality  and  nestles  beneath 
her ; the  young  squirrel  brought  up  in  lonely  captivity, 
when  nuts  are  given  him  for  the  first  time,  opens  and 
eats  some  and  buries  others  with  all  the  movements 
characteristic  of  his  species ; the  kitten  in  the  presence 
of  a dog  or  a mouse  assumes  the  characteristic  feline 
attitudes  and  behaves  as  all  his  fellows  of  countless 
generations  have  behaved.  Even  so  intelligent  an 
animal  as  the  domesticated  dog  behaves  on  some 
occasions  in  a purely  instinctive  fashion  ; when,  for 
example,  a terrier  comes  across  the  trail  of  a rabbit,  his 
hunting  instinct  is  immediately  aroused  by  the  scent;  he 
becomes  blind  and  deaf  to  all  other  impressions  as  he 
follows  the  trail,  and  then,  when  he  sights  his  quarry, 
breaks  out  into  the  yapping  which  is  peculiar  to 
occasions  of  this  kind.  His  wild  ancestors  hunted  in 
packs,  and,  under  those  conditions,  the  characteristic 
bark  emitted  on  sighting  the  quarry  served  to  bring  his 
fellows  to  his  aid  ; but  when  the  domesticated  terrier 
hunts  alone,  his  excited  yapping  can  but  facilitate  the 
escape  of  his  quarry ; yet  the  old  social  instinct  operates 
too  powerfully  to  be  controlled  by  his  moderate 
intelligence. 

These  few  instances  of  purely  instinctive  behaviour 
illustrate  clearly  its  nature.  In  the  typical  case  some 
sense-impression,or  combination  of  sense-impressions,  ex- 
cites some  perfectly  definite  behaviour,  some  movement  or 


26 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


train  of  movements  which  is  the  same  in  all  individuals 
of  the  species  and  on  all  similar  occasions ; and  in 
general  the  behaviour  so  occasioned  is  of  a kind  either 
to  promote  the  welfare  of  the  individual  animal  or  of  the 
community  to  which  he  belongs,  or  to  secure  the  per- 
petuation of  the  species.^ 

In  treating  of  the  instincts  of  animals,  writers  have 
usually  described  them  as  innate  tendencies  to  certain 
kinds  of  action,  and  Herbert  Spencer’s  widely  accepted 
definition  of  instinctive  action  as  compound  reflex 
action  takes  account  only  of  the  behaviour  or  movements 
to  which  instincts  give  rise.  But  instincts  are  more 
than  innate  tendencies  or  dispositions  to  certain  kinds  of 
movement.  There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  even 
the  most  purely  instinctive  action  is  the  outcome  of  a 
distinctly  mental  process,  one  which  is  incapable  of 
being  described  in  purely  mechanical  terms,  because  it 
is  a psycho-physical  process,  involving  psychical  as  well 
as  physical  changes,  and  one  which,  like  every  other 
mental  process,  has,  and  can  only  be  fully  described  in 
terms  of,  the  three  aspects  of  all  mental  process — the 
cognitive,  the  affective,  and  the  conative  aspects ; that  is 
to  say,  every  instance  of  instinctive  behaviour  involves  a 
knowing  of  some  thing  or  object,  a feeling  in  regard  to 
it,  and  a striving  towards  or  away  from  that  object. 

We  cannot,  of  course,  directly  observe  the  threefold 
psychical  aspect  of  the  psycho-physical  process  that 
issues  in  instinctive  behaviour;  but  we  are  amply 
justified  in  assuming  that  it  invariably  accompanies  the 

' In  many  cases  an  instinct  is  excitable  only  during  the  pre- 
valence of  some  special  organic  condition  {e.g.,  the  nest-building 
and  mating  instincts  of  birds,  the  sitting  instinct  of  the  broody 
hen) ; and  some  writers  have  given  such  organic  conditions  an 
undue  prominence,  while  neglecting  the  essential  part  played  by 
sense-impressions. 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS 


27 


process  in  the  nervous  system  of  which  the  instinctive 
movements  are  the  immediate  result,  a process  which, 
being  initiated  on  stimulation  of  some  sense  organ  by 
the  physical  impressions  received  from  the  object, 
travels  up  the  sensory  nerves,  traverses  the  brain,  and 
descends  as  an  orderly  or  co-ordinated  stream  of  nervous 
impulses  along  efferent  nerves  to  the  appropriate  groups 
of  muscles  and  other  executive  organs.  ^We  are  justified 
in  assuming  the  cognitive  aspect  of  the  psychical  pro- 
cess, because  the  nervous  excitation  seems  to  traverse 
those  parts  of  the  brain  whose  excitement  involves  the 
production  of  sensations  ^or  changes  in  the  sensory 
content  of  consciousness  ;'%e  are  justified  in  assuming 
the  affective  aspect  of  the  psychical  process,  because  the 
creature  exhibits  unmistakable  symptoms  of  feeling  and 
emotional  excitement ; '^nd,  especially,  we  are  justified 
in  assuming  the  conative  aspect  of  the  psychical  process, 
because  all  instinctive  behaviour  exhibits  that  unique 
mark  of  mental  process,  a persistent  striving  towards 
the  natural  end  of  the  process,  /That  is  to  say,  the  pro- 
cess, unlike  any  merely  mechanical  process,  is  not  to  be 
arrested  by  any  sufficient  mechanical  obstacle,  but  is 
rather  intensified  by  any  such  obstacle  and  only  comes 
to  an  end  either  when  its  appropriate  goal  is  achieved, 
or  when  some  stronger  incompatible  tendency  is  excited, 
or  when  the  creature  is  exhausted  by  its  persistent 
efforts. 

l)  Now,  the  psycho-physical  process  that  issues  in  an 
instinctive  action  is  initiated  by  a sense-impression 
which,  usually,  is  but  one  of  many  sense-impressions 
received  at  the  same  time  ; and  the  fact  that  this  one 
impression  plays  an  altogether  dominant  part  in  deter- 
mining the  animal’s  behaviour  shows  that  its  effects  are 
peculiarly  favoured,  that  the  nervous  system  is  peculiarly 
fitted  to  receive  and  to  respond  to  just  that  kind  of 


28 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


impression.  The  impression  must  be  supposed  to  excite, 
not  merely  detailed  changes  in  the  animal’s  field  of  sensa- 
tion, but  a sensation  or  complex  of  sensations  that  has 
significance  or  meaning  for  the  animal ; hence  we  must 
regard  the  instinctive  process  in  its  cognitive  aspect  as 
distinctly . of  the  nature  of  perception,  however  rudi- 
mentary. ‘v  In  the  animals  most  nearly  allied  to  ourselves 
we  can,  in  many  instances  of  instinctive  behaviour, 
clearly  recognise  the  symptoms  of  some  particular  kind 
of  emotion  such  as  fear,  anger,  or  tender  feeling ; and 
the  same  symptoms  always  accompany  any  one  kind  of 
instinctive  behaviour,  as  when  the  cat  assumes  the 
defensive  attitude,  the  dog  resents  the  intrusion  of  a 
strange  dog,  or  the  hen  tenderly  gathers  her  brood 
beneath  her  wings.  We  seem  justified  in  believing  that 
each  kind  of  instinctive  behaviour  is  always  attended  by 
some  such  emotional  excitement,  however  faint,  which 
in  each  cas^e  is  specific  or  peculiar  to  that  kind  of 
behaviour.  Analogy  with  our  own  experience  justifies 
us,  also,  in  assuming  that  the  persistent  striving  towards 
its  end,  which  characterises  mental  process  and  dis- 
tinguishes instinctive  behaviour  most  clearly  from  mere 
reflex  action,  implies  some  such  mode  of  experience  as 
we  call  conative,  the  kind  of  experience  which  in  its 
more  developed  forms  is  properly  called  desire  or 
aversion,  but  which,  in  the  blind  form  in  which  we 
sometimes  have  it  and  which  is  its  usual  form  among  the 
animals,  is  a mere  impulse,  or  craving,  or  uneasy  sense 
of  want,  Further,  we  seem  justified  in  believing  that 
the  continued  obstruction  of  instinctive  striving  is  always 
accompanied  by  painful  feeling,  its  successful  progress 
towards  its  end  by  pleasurable  feeling,  and  the  achieve- 
ment of  its  end  by  a pleasurable  sense  of  satisfaction, 
•^n  instinctive  action,  thetvfmust  not  be  regarded  as 
simple  or  compound  reflex  action  if  by  reflex  action  we 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS 


29 


mean,  as  is  usually  meant,  a movement  caused  by  a 
sense-stimulus  and  resulting  from  a sequence  of 
merely  physical  processes  in  some  nervous  arc.  Never- 
theless, just  as  a reflex  action  implies  the  presence  in 
the  nervous  system  of  the  reflex  nervous  arc,  so  the 
instinctive  action  also  implies  some  enduring  nervous 
basis  whose  organisation  is  inherited,  an  innate  or 
inherited  psycho-physical  disposition,  which,  anatomi- 
cally regarded,  probably  has  the  form  of  a compound 
system  of  sensori-motor  arcs. 

We  may,  then,  define  an  instinct  as  an  inherited  or 
innate  psycho-physical  disposition  which  determines  its 
possessor  to  perceive,  and  to  pay  attention  to,  objects  of 
a certain  class,  to  experience  an  emotional  excitement 
of  a particular  quality  upon  perceiving  such  an  object, 
and  to  act  in  regard  to  it  in  a particular  manner,  or,  at 
least,  to  experience  an  impulse  to  such  action. 

It  must  further  be  noted  that  some  instincts  remain 

inexcitable  except  during  the  prevalence  of _some 

tei^orary  bodjJy_^^  a„sjiunger.  In  these  cases 

we  must  suppose  that  the  bodily  process  or  state  deter- 
mines the  stimulation  of  sense-organs  within  the  body, 
and  that  nervous  currents  ascending  from  these  to  the 
psycho-physical  disposition  maintain  it  in  an  excitable 
condition.^ 

* Most  definitions  of  instincts  and  instinctive  actions  take 
account  only  of  their  conative  aspect,  of  the  motor  tendencies  by 

which  the  instincts  of  animals  are  most  clearly  manifested  to  us  ; 
and  it  is  a common  mistake  to  ignore  the  cognitive  and  the  affec- 
tive aspects  of  the  instinctive  mental  process.  Some  authors 
make  the  worse  mistake  of  assuming  that  instinctive  actions  are 
performed  unconsciously.  Herbert  Spencer’s  definition  of 
instinctive  action  as  compound  reflex  action  was  mentioned 
above.  Addison  wrote  of  instinct  that  it  is *  **  an  immediate 
impression  from  the  first  Mover  and  the  Divine  Energy  acting  in 
the  creatures,”  Fifty  years  ago  the  entomologists,  Kirby  and 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


30 

^The  behaviour  of  some  of  the  lower  animals  seems  to 
be  almost  completely  determined  throughout  their  lives 
by  instincts  modified  but  very  little  by  experience; 
they  perceive,  feel,  and  act  in  a perfectly  definite  and 
invariable  manner  whenever  a given  instinct  is  excited — 
i.e,,  whenever  the  presence  of  the  appropriate  object 
coincides  with  the  appropriate  organic  state  of  the 
creature,  ^he  highest  degree  of  complexity  of  mental  | 
process  attained  by  such  creatures  is  a struggle  between  » 

Spence,  wrote:  '*We  may  call  the  instincts  of  animals  those 
faculties  implanted  in  them  by  the  Creator,  by  which,  indepen- 
dent of  instruction,  observation,  or  experience,  they  are  all  alike 
impelled  to  the  performance  of  certain  actions  tending  to  the 
wellbeing  of  the  individual  and  the  preservation  of  the  species.” 
More  recently  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Peckham,  who  have  observed  the 
behaviour  of  wasps  so  carefully,  have  written  : “ Under  the  term 
^ instinct'  we  place  all  complex  acts  which  are  performed  previous 
to  experience,  and  in  a similar  manner  by  all  members  of  the 
same  sex  and  race.”  One  modern  authority.  Professor  Karl  Groos,. 
goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  idea  of  consciousness  must  be 
rigidly  excluded  from  any  definition  of  instinct  which  is  to  be  of 
practical  utility.”  /in  view  of  this  persistent  tendency  to  ignore 
the  inner  or  psychical  side  of  instinctive  processes,  it  seems  to 
me  important  to  insist  upon  it,  and  especially  to  recognise  in  our 
definition  its  cognitive  and  affective  aspects  as  well  as  its  conative 
aspect.  I would  reverse  Professor  Groos’s  dictum  and  would 
say  that  any  definition  of  instinctive  action  that  does  not  insist 
upon  its  psychical  aspect  is  useless  for  practical  purposes,  and 
worse  than  useless  because  misleading.  For,  if  we  neglect 
the  psychical  aspect  of  instinctive  processes,  it  is  impossible  to 
understand  the  part  played  by  instincts  in  the  development 
Df  the  human  mind  and  in  the  determination  of  the  conduct  of 
ndividuals  and  societies  ; and  it  is  the  fundamental  and  all- 
pervading  character  of  their  influence  upon  the  social  life 
of  mankind  which  alone  gives  the  consideration  of  instincts  its 
great  practical  importance. 

The  definition  of  instinct  proposed  above  does  not  insist,  as  do 
many  definitions,  that  the  instinctive  action  is  one  performed 
without  previous  experience  of  the  object ; for  it  is  only  when  an 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS 


31 


two  opposed  instinctive  tendencies  simultaneously 
excited.  Such  behaviour  is  relatively  easy  to  under- 
stand in  the  light  of  the  conception  of  instincts  as 
innate  psycho-physical  dispositions. 

While  it  is  doubtful  whether  the  behaviour  of  any 
animal  is  wholly  determined  by  instincts  quite  unmodi- 
fied by  experience,  it  is  clear  that  all  the  higher  animals 
learn  in  various  and  often  considerable  degrees  to  adapt 
their  instinctive  actions  to  peculiar  circumstances  ; and 
in  the  long  course  of  the  development  of  each  human 
mind,  immensely  greater  complications  of  the  instinc- 
tive processes  are  brought  about,  complications  so  great 
that  they  have  obscured  until  recent  years  the  essential 
likeness  of  the  instinctive  processes  in  men  and  animals. 
These  complications  of  instinctive  processes  are  of 
four  principal  kinds,  which  we  may  distinguish  as 
follows  : — 

(i)  The  instinctive  reactions  become  capable  of  being 

instinct  is  exercised  for  the  first  time  by  any  creature  that  the 
action  is  prior  to  experience,  and  instinctive  actions  may 
continue  to  be  instinctive  even  after  much  experience  of  their 
objects.  The  nest-building  or  the  migratory  flight  of  birds  does 
not  cease  to  be  instinctive  when  these  actions  are  repeated  year 
after  year,  even  though  the  later  performances  show  improve- 
ment through  experience,  as  the  instinctive  actions  of  the  higher 
animals  commonly  do.  Nor  does  our  definition  insist,  as  some 
do,  that  the  instinctive  action  is  performed  without  awareness  of 
the  end  towards  which  it  tends,  for  this  too  is  not  essential  ; 
it  may  be,  and  in  the  case  of  the  lower  animals^  no  doubt, 
often  is,  so  performed,  as  also  by  the  very  young  child ; but  in 
the  case  of  the  higher  animals  some  prevision  of  the  immediate 
end,  however  vague,  probably  accompanies  an  instinctive  action 
that  has  often  been  repeated  ; e,g.^  in  the  case  of  the  dog  that 
has  followed  the  trail  of  game  many  times,  we  may  properly 
regard  the  action  as  instinctive,  although  we  can  hardly  doubt 
that,  after  many  kills,  the  creature  has  some  anticipation  of  the 
end  of  his  activity. 


32 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


initiated,  not  only  by  the  perception  of  objects  of  the 
kind  which  directly  excite  the  innate  disposition,  the 
natural  or  native  excitants  of  the  instinct,  but  also  by 
ideas  of  such  objects,  and  by  perceptions  and  by  ideas 
of  objects  of  other  kinds  : 

(2)  the  bodily  movements  in  which  the  instinct  finds 
expression  may  be  modified  and  complicated  to  an 
indefinitely  great  degree  : 

(3)  owing  to  the  complexity  of  the  ideas  which  can 
bring  the  human  instincts  into  play,  it  frequently 
happens  that  several  instincts  are  simultaneously 
excited  ; when  the  several  processes  blend  with  various 
degrees  of  intimacy : 

(4)  the  instinctive  tendencies  become  more  or  less 
systematically  organised  about  certain  objects  or  ideas. 

The  full  consideration  of  the  first  two  modes  of  com- 
plication of  instinctive  behaviour  would  lead  us  too  far 
into  the  psychology  of  the  intellectual  processes,  to 
which  most  of  the  textbooks  of  psychology  are  mainly 
devoted.  It  must  suffice  merely  to  indicate  in  the 
present  chapter  a few  points  of  prime  importance  in  this 
connection.  The  third  and  fourth  complications  will  be 
dealt  with  at  greater  length  in  the  following  chapters, 
for  they  stand  in  much  need  of  elucidation. 

In  order  to  understand  these  complications  of  instinc- 
tive behaviour  we  must  submit  the  conception  of  an 
instinct  to  a more  minute  analysis.  It  was  said  above 
that  every  instinctive  process  has  the  three  aspects 
of  all  mental  process,  the  cognitive,  the  affective,  and 
the  conative.  /Now,  the  innate  psycho-physical  disposi- 
tion, which  is  an  instinct,  may  be  regarded  as  consisting 
of  three  corresponding  parts,  an  afferent,  a central,  and 
a motor  or  efferent  part,  whose  activities  are  the  cogni- 
tive, the  affective,  and  the  conative  features  respectively 
of  the  total  instinctive  process.  The  afferent  or  recep- 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS 


33 


tive  part  of  the  total  disposition  is  some  organised 
group  of  nervous  elements  or  neurones  that  is  specially 
adapted  to  receive  and  to  elaborate  the  impulses  initiated 
in  the  sense-organ  by  the  native  object  of  the  instinct ; 
its  constitution  and  activities  determine  the  sensory 
content  of  the  psycho-physical  process.  From  the 
afferent  part  the  excitement  spreads  over  to  the  central 
part  of  the  disposition  ; the  constitution  of  this  part 
determines  in  the  main  the  distribution  of  the  nervous 
im.pulses,  especially  of  the  impulses  that  descend  to 
modify  the  working  of  the  visceral  organs,  the  heart, 
lungs,  blood-vessels,  glands,  and  so  forth,  in  the  manner 
required  for  the  most  effective  execution  of  the  instinc- 
tive <!.ction  ; the  nervous  activities  of  this  central  part 
are  the  correlates  of  the  affective  or  emotional  aspect  or 
feature  of  the  total  psychical  process.^  The  excitement 
of  the  efferent  or  motor  part  reaches  it  by  way  of  the 
central  part ; its  constitution  determines  the  distribution 
of  impulses  to  the  muscles  of  the  skeletal  system  by 
which  the  instinctive  action  is  effected,  and  its  nervous 
activities  are  the  correlates  of  the  conative  element  of 
the  psychical  process,  of  the  felt  impulse  to  action. 

Now,  the  afferent  or  receptive  part  and  the  efferent  or 
motor  part  are  capable  of  being  greatly  modified, 
independently  of  one  another  and  of  the  central  part,  in 
the  course  of  the  life  history  of  the  individual  ; while 
the  central  part  persists  throughout  life  as  the  essential 
unchanging  nucleus  of  the  disposition.  Hence  in  man, 
r whose  intelligence  and  adaptability  are  so  great,  the 
I afferent  and  efferent  parts  of  each  instinctive  disposition 

* It  is  probable  that  these  central  affective  parts  of  the  instinc- 
tive dispositions  have  their  seat  in  the  basal  ganglia  of  the  brain. 
The  evidence  in  favour  of  this  view  has  been  greatly  strengthened 
by  the  recent  work  of  Pagano  Archives  Italiennes  de  Bio- 
logic,1906). 

D 


34 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


are  liable  to  many  modifications,  while  the  central  part 
alone  remains  unmodified  : that  is  to  say,  the  cognitive 
processes  through  which  any  instinctive  process  may  be 
initiated  exhibit  a great  complication  and  variety  ; and 
the  actual  bodily  movements  by  which  the  instinctive 
process  achieves  its  end  may  be  complicated  to  an 
indefinitely  great  extent ; while  the  emotional  excite- 
ment, with  the  accompanying  nervous  activities  of  the 
central  part  of  the  disposition,  is  the  only  part  of  the 
total  instinctive  process  that  retains  its  specific  cha- 
racter and  remains  common  to  all  individuals  and  all 
situations  in  which  the  instinct  is  excited.  It  is  for  this 
reason  that  authors  have  commonly  treated  of  the 
instinctive  actions  of  animals  on  the  one  hand,  and  of 
the  emotions  of  men  on  the  other  hand,  as  distinct  types 
of  mental  process,  failing  to  see  that  each  kind  of 
emotional  excitement  is  always  an  indication  of,  and 
the  most  constant  feature  of,  some  instinctive  process. 

Let  us  now  consider  very  briefly  the  principal  ways 
in  which  the  instinctive  disposition  may  be  modified  on 
Aj  its  afferent  or  receptive  side ; and  let  us  take,  for  the 
sake  of  clearness  of  exposition,  the  case  of  a particular 
instinct,  namely  the  instinct  of  fear  or  flight,  which  is 
one  of  the  strongest  and  most  widely  distributed  instincts 
throughout  the  animal  kingdom. 0)  In  man  and  in  most 
animals  this  instinct  is  capable  of  being  excited  by  any 
sudden  loud  noise,  independently  of  all  experience  of 
danger  or  harm  associated  with  such  noises.  AVe  must 
suppose,  then,  that  the  afferent  inlet,  or  one  of  the 
afferent  inlets,  of  this  innate  disposition  consists  in 
a system  of  auditory  neurones  connected  by  sensory 
nerves  with  the  ear.  This  afferent  inlet  to  this  innate 
disposition  is  but  little  specialised,  since  it  may  be 
excited  by  any  loud  noise.  One  change  it  may  under- 
go through  experience  is  specialisation ; on  repeated 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS 


35 


experience  of  noises  of  certain  kinds  that  are  never 
accompanied  or  followed  by  hurtful  effects,  most 
creatures  will  learn  to  neglect  them  ^ ; their  instinct  of 
flight  is  no  longer  excited  by  them  ; they  learn,  that  is 
to  say,  to  discriminate  between  these  and  other  noises ; 
this  implies  that  the  perceptual  disposition,  the  afferent 
inlet  of  the  instinct,  has  become  further  specialised. 
-PMore  important  is  the  other  principal  mode  in  which 
the  instinct  may  be  modified  on  its  afferent  or  cognitive 
side.  / Consider  the  case  of  the  birds  on  an  uninhabited 
island,  which  show  no  fear  of  men  on  their  first  appear- 
ance on  the  island.  The  absence  of  fear  at  the  sight  of 
man  implies,  not  that  the  birds  have  no  instinct  of  fear, 
but  that  the  instinct  has  no  afferent  inlet  specialised  for 
the  reception  of  the  retinal  impression  made  by  the 
human  form.  But  the  men  employ  themselves  in 
shooting,  and  very  soon  the  sight  of  a man  excites  the 
instinct  of  fear  in  the  birds,  and  they  take  to  flight  at 
his  approach.  How  are  we  to  interpret  this  change  of 
^instinctive  behaviour  brought  about  by  experience? 
IjShall  we  say  that  the  birds  observe  on  one  occasion, 
or  on  several  or  many  occasions,  that  on  the  approach 
of  a man  one  of  their  number  falls  to  the  ground,  utter- 
ing cries  of  pain ; that  they  infer  that  the  man  has 
wounded  it,  and  that  he  may  wound  and  hurt  them,  and 
that  he  is  therefore  to  be  avoided  in  the  future?  No 
psychologist  would  now  accept  this  anthropomorphic 
interpretation  of  the  facts.  If  the  behaviour  we  are 
considering  were  that  of  savage  men,  or  even  of  a com- 
munity of  philosophers  and  logicians,  such  an  account 
would  err  in  ascribing  the.  change  of  behaviour  to  a 
purely  intellectual  process.  tVbhall  we,  then,  say  that  the 

*As  in  the  case  of  wild  creatures  that  we  may  see  from  the 
windows  of  a railway  train  browsing  undisturbed  by  the  familiar 
noise. 


36 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


sudden  loud  sound  of  the  gun  excites  the  instinct  of 
fear,  and  that,  because  the  perception  of  this  sound  is 
constantly  accompanied  by  the  visual  perception  of 
the  human  form,  the  idea  of  the  latter  becomes  associ- 
ated with  the  idea  of  the  sound,  so  that  thereafter  the 
sight  of  a man  reproduces  the  idea  of  the  sound  of  the 
gun,  and  hence  leads  to  the  excitement  of  the  instinct 
by  way  of  its  innately  organised  afferent  inlet,  the 
system  of  auditory  neurones?  This  would  be  much 
nearer  the  truth  than  the  former  account ; some  such 
interpretation  of  facts  of  this  order  has  been  offered  by 
many  psychologists  and  very  generally  accepted.^  Its 
acceptance  involves  the  attribution  of  free  ideas,  of  the 
power  of  representation  of  objects  independently  of 
sense-presentation,  to  whatever  animals  display  this  kind 
of  modification  of  instinctive  behaviour  by  experience — 
that  is  to  say,  to  all  the  animals  save  the  lowest ; 
and  there  are  good  reasons  for  believing  that  pnly  man 
and  the  higher  animals  have  this  power.  (^yXVe  are 
therefore  driven  to  look  for  a still  simpler  interpretation 
of  the  facts,  and  such  a one  is  not  far  to  seek.  We  may 
suppose  that,  since  the  visual  presentation  of  the  human 
form  repeatedly  accompanies  the  excitement  of  the 
instinct  of  fear  by  the  sound  of  the  gun,  it  acquires  the 
power  of  exciting  directly  the  reactions  characteristic 
of  this  instinct,  rather  than  indirectly  by  way  of  the 
reproduction  of  the  idea  of  the  sound ; we  may 
suppose  that,  after  repetition  of  the  experience,  the  sight 
of  a man  directly  excites  the  instinctive  process  in  its 
affective  and  conative  aspects  only ; or  we  may  say,  in 
physiological  terms,  that  the  visual  disposition  con- 
cerned  in  the  elaboration  of  the  retinal  impression  of 

* It  is,  e,g.y  the  interpretation  proposed  by  G.  H.  Schneider 
in  his  work  Der  thierische  Wille’' ; it  mars  this  otherwise 
excellent  book. 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS 


37 


the  human  form  becomes  directly  connected  or  asso- 
dated  with  the  central  and  efferent  parts  of  the 
instinctive  disposition,  which  thus  acquires,  through 
(l)  the  repetition  of  this  experience,  a new  afferent  inlet 
through  which  it  may  henceforth  be  excited  indepen- 
dently of  its  innate  afferent  inlet, 

/There  is,  I think,  good  reason  to  believe  that  this  third 
in^rpr^tajion  is  much  nearer  the  truth  than  the  other  two 
considered  above.  the  first  place,  the  assumption  of 
such  relative  independence  of  the  afferent  part  of  an 
instinctive  disposition  as  is  implied  by  this  interpre- 
tation is  justified  by  the  fact  that  many  instincts  may 
be  excited  by  very  different  objects  affecting  different 
senses,  prior  to  all  experience  of  such  objects.  The 
instinct  of  fear  is  the  most  notable  in  this  respect,  for  in 
many  animals  it  may  be  excited  by  certain  special 
impressions  of  sight,  of  smell,  and  of  hearing,  as  well 
as  by  all  loud  noises  (perhaps  also  by  any  painful  sense- 
impression),  all  of  which  impressions  evoke  the  emo- 
tional expressions  and  the  bodily  movements  charac- 
teristic of  the  instinct.  Hence,  we  may  infer  that  such 
an  instinct  has  several  innately  organised  afferent  inlets, 
through  each  of  which  its  central  and  efferent  parts 
may  be  excited  without  its  other  afferent  inlets  being 
involved  in  the  excitement, 

"^ut  the  best  evidence  in  favour  of  the  third  inter- 
pretation is  that  which  we  may  obtain  by  introspective 
observation  of  our  own  emotional  states.  Through 
injuries  received  we  may  learn  to  fear,  or  to  be  angered 
by,  the  presence  of  a person  or  animal  or  thing  towards 
which  we  were  at  first  indifferent ; and  we  may  then 
experience  the  emotional  excitement  and  the  impulse 
to  the  appropriate  movements  of  flight  or  aggression, 
without  recalling  the  nature  and  occasion  of  the  injuries 
we  have  formerly  suffered  'J  although  the  idea  of 


38 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


the  former  injury  may  be  reproduced  by  the  perception, 
or  by  the  idea,  of  the  person,  animal,  or  thing  from 
which  it  was  received,  yet  the  reproduction  of  this 
idea  is  not  an  essential  step  in  the  process  of  re- 
excitement of  the  instinctive  reaction  in  its  affective 
and  conative  aspects ;/ for  the  visual  impression  made 
by  the  person  or  thing  leads  directly  to  the  excitemient 
of  the  central  and  efferent  parts  of  the  innate 
disposition.  /In  this  way  our  emotional  and  conative 
tendencies  become  directly  associated  by  experience 
with  many  objects  to  which  we  are  natively  indifferent ; 
and  not  only  do  we  not  necessarily  recall  the  experience 
through  which  the  association  was  set  up,  but  in  many 
such  cases  we  cannot  do  so  by  any  effort  of  recollection.* 

Such^acquisition  of  new  perceptual  inlets  by  in- 
stinctive dispositions,  in  accordance  with  the  principle 
of  association  in  virtue  of  temporal  contiguity]^  seems 
to  occur  abundantly  among  all  the  higher  animals  and 
to  be  the  principal  mode  in  which  they  profit  by 
experience  and  learn  to  adapt  their  behaviour  to  a 
greater  variety  of  the  objects  of  their  environment  than 
is  provided  for  by  their  purely  innate  dispositions.  In 
man  it  occurs  still  more  abundantly,  and  in  his  case 
the  further  complication  ensues  that  each  sense-pre- 
sentation that  thus  becomes  capable  of  arousing  some 
emotional  and  conative  disposition  may  be  represented, 
or  reproduced  in  idea ; and,  since  the  representation, 
having  in  the  main  the  same  neural  basis  as  the  sense- 
presentation,  induces  equally  well  the  same  emotional 

* In  this  way  some  particular  odour,  some  melody  or  sound, 
some  phrase  or  trick  of  speech  or  manner,  some  peculiar 
combination  of  colour  or  effect  of  light  upon  the  landscape, 
may  become  capable  of  directly  exciting  some  affective  dis- 
position, and  we  find  ourselves  suddenly  swept  by  a wave  of 
strong  emotion  for  which  we  can  assign  no  adequate  cause. 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS 


39 


and  conative  excitement,  and  since  it  may  be  brought 
to  mind  by  any  one  of  the  intellectual  processes,  ranging 
from  simple  associative  reproduction  to  the  most  subtle 
processes  of  judgment  and  inference,  the  ways  in  which 
any  one  instinctive  disposition  of  a developed  human 
mind  may  be  excited  are  indei^itely  various. 

There  is  a second  principal  mode  in  which  objects 
other  than  the  native  objects  of  an  instinct  may  lead 
to  the  excitement  of  its  central  and  efferent  parts. 
This  is  similar  to  the  mode  of  reproduction  of  ideas 
known  as  the  reproduction  by  similars  ; a thing,  or 
sense-impression,  more  or  less  like  the  specific  excitant 
of  an  instinct,  but  really  of  a different  class,  excites  the 
instinct  in  virtue  of  those  features  in  which  it  resembles 
the  specific  object.  As  a very  simple  instance  of  this, 
we  may  take  the  case  of  a horse  shying  at  an  old  coat 
left  lying  by  the  roadside.  The  shying  is,  no  doubt,  due 
to  the  excitement  of  an  instinct  whose  function  is  to 
secure  a quick  retreat  from  any  crouching  beast  of  prey, 
and  the  coat  sufficiently  resembles  such  a crouching 
form  to  excite  the  instinct.  This  example  illustrates 
the  operation  of  this  principle  in  the  crudest  fashion. 
In  the  human  mind  it  works  in  a much  more  subtle  and 
wide-reaching  fashion.  Very  delicate  resemblances  of 
form  and  relation  between  two  objects  may  suffice  to 
render  one  of  them  capable  of  exciting  the  emotion 
and  the  impulse  which  are  the  appropriate  instinctive 
response  to  the  presentation  of  the  other  object ; and, 
in  order  that  this  shall  occur,  it  is  not  necessary  that  the 
individual  shall  become  explicitly  aware  of  the  resem- 
blance between  the  two  objects,  nor  even  that  the  idea 
of  the  second  object  shall  be  brought  to  his  conscious- 
ness ; though  this,  no  doubt,  occurs  in  many  cases.  The 
wide  scope  of  this  principle  in  the  human  mind  is  due, 
not  merely  to  the  subtler  operation  of  resemblances,  but 


40 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


also  to  the  fact  that  through  the  working  of  the  principle 
of  temporal  contiguity,  discussed  on  the  foregoing  page, 
the  number  of  objects  capable  of  directly  exciting  any 
instinct  becomes  very  considerable,  and  each  such  object 
then  serves  as  a basis  for  the  operation  of  the  principle 
of  resemblance  / that  is  to  say,  each  object  that  in  virtue 
of  temporal  contiguity  acquires  the  power  of  exciting  the 
central  and  efferent  parts  of  an  instinct  renders  possible 
the  production  of  the  same  effect  by  a number  of  objects 
more  or  less  resembling  it.  The  conjoint  operation  of 
the  two  principles  may  be  illustrated  by  a simple 
example  : a child  is  terrified  upon  one  occasion  by  the 
violent  behaviour  of  a man  of  a peculiar  cast  of 
countenance  or  of  some  special  fashion  of  dress ; there- 
after not  only  does  the  perception  or  idea  of  this 
man  excite  fear,  but  any  man  resembling  him  in  face 
or  costume  may  do  so  without  the  idea  of  the  original 
occasion  of  fear,  or  of  the  terrifying  individual,  recurring 
t^  consciousness. 

\As  regards  the  modification  of  the  bodily  move- 
ments by  means  of  which  an  instinctive  mental  process 
achieves,^  or  strives  to  achieve,  its  end,  man  excels  the 
animals  even  to  a greater  degree  than  as  regards  the 
modification  of  the  cognitive  part  of  the  process.'^  For 
the  animals  acquire  and  use  hardly  any  movement- 
complexes  that  are  not  natively  given  in  their  in- 
stinctive dispositions  and  in  the  reflex  co-ordinations 
of  their  spinal  cords.  This  is  true  of  even  so  intelli- 
gent an  animal  as  the  domestic  dog.  Many  of  the 
higher  animals  may  by  long  training  be  taught  to 

* It  would,  of  course,  be  more  correct  to  say  that  the  creature 
strives  to  achieve  its  end  under  the  driving  power  of  the  in- 
stinctive impulse  awakened  within  it,  but,  if  this  is  recognised, 
it  is  permissible  to  avoid  the  repeated  use  of  this  cumbrous 
phraseology. 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS 


41 


acquire  a few  movement-complexes — a dog  to  walk  on 
its  hind  legs,  or  a cat  to  sit  up ; but  the  wonder  with 
which  we  gaze  at  a circus-horse  standing  on  a tub,  or 
at  a dog  dancing  on  hind  legs,  shows  how  strictly 
limited  to  the  natively  given  combinations  of  move- 
ments all  the  animals  normally  are. 

In  the  human  being,  on  the  other  hand,  a few  only  of 
the  simpler  instincts  that  ripen  soon  after  birth  are  dis- 
played in  movements  determined  purely  by  the  innate 
dispositions ; such  are  the  instincts  of  sucking,  of  wail- 
ing, of  crawling,  of  winking  and  shrinking  before  a 
coming  blow.  Most  of  the  human  instincts  ripen  at 
relatively  late  periods  in  the  course  of  individual  de- 
velopment, when  considerable  power  of  intelligent  con- 
trol and  imitation  of  movement  has  been  acquired  ; 
hence  the  motor  tendencies  of  these  instincts  are  seldom 
manifested  in  their  purely  native  forms,  but  are  from 
the  first  modified,  controlled,  and  suppressed  in  various 
degrees.  This  is  the  case  more  especially  with  the  large 
movements  of  trunk  and  limbs ; while  the  subsidiary 
movements,  those  which  Darwin  called  serviceable  asso- 
ciated movements,  such  as  those  due  to  contractions  of 
the  facial  muscles,  are  less  habitually  controlled,  save 
by  men  of  certain  races  and  countries  among  whom 
control  of  facial  movement  is  prescribed  by  custom. 
An  illustration  may  indicate  the  main  principle  in- 
volved : One  may  have  learnt  to  suppress  more  or  less 
completely  the  bodily  movements  in  which  the  excite- 
ment of  the  instinct  of  pugnacity  naturally  finds  vent ; 
or  by  a study  of  pugilism  one  may  have  learnt  to  render 
these  movements  more  finely  adapted  to  secure  the  end 
of  the  instinct ; or  one  may  have  learnt  to  replace  them 
by  the  habitual  use  of  weapons,  so  that  the  hand  flies 
to  the  sword-hilt  or  to  the  hip-pocket,  instead  of  being 
raised  to  strike,  whenever  this  instinct  is  excited.  But 


42 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


/ 

i 

/ 

1 

i 


i 


one  exercises  but  little,  if  any,  control  over  the  violent 
beating  of  the  heart,  the  flushing  of  the  face,  the 
deepened  respiration,  and  the  general  redistribution  of 
blood-supply  and  nervous  tension  which  constitute  the 
visceral  expression  of  the  excitement  of  this  instinct  and 
which  are  determined  by  the  constitution  of  its  central 
affective  part.  Hence  in  the  human  adult,  while  this 
instinct  may  be  excited  by  objects  and  situations  that 
are  not  provided  for  in  the  innate  disposition,  and  may 
express  itself  in  bodily  movements  which  also  are  not 
natively  determined,  or  may  fail  to  find  expression  in 
any  such  movements  owing  to  strong  volitional  control, 
its  unmodified  central  part  will  produce  visceral  changes, 
with  the  accompanying  emotional  state  of  conscious- 
ness, in  accordance  with  its  unmodified  native  consti- 
tution ; and  these  visceral  changes  will  usually  be 
accompanied  by  the  innately  determined  facial  ex- 
pression in  however  slight  a degree;  hence  result  the 
characteristic  expressions  or  symptoms  of  the  emotion 
of  anger  which,  as  regards  their  main  features,  are 
common  to  all  men  of  all  times  and  all  races. 

All  the  principal  instincts  of  man  are  liable  to  similar 
modifications  of  their  afferent  and  motor  parts,  while 
their  central  parts  remain  unchanged  and  determine  the 
emotional  tone  of  consciousness  and  the  visceral  changes 
characteristic  of  the  excitement  of  the  instinct. 

It  must  be  added  that  the  conative  aspect  of  the 
psychical  process  always  retains  the  unique  quality  of 
an  impulse  to  activity,  even  though  the  instinctive 
activity  has  been  modified  by  habitual  control ; and 
this  felt  impulse,  when  it  becomes  conscious  of  its  end, 
assumes  the  character  of  an  explicit  desire  or  aversion. 

Are,  then,  these  instinctive  impulses  the  only  motive 
powers  of  the  human  mind  to  thought  and  action? 
What  of  pleasure  and  pain,  which  by  so  many  of  the 


THE  NATURE  OF  INSTINCTS 


43 


older  psychologists  were  held  to  be  the  only  motives 
of  human  activity,  the  only  objects  or  sources  of  desire 
and  aversion  ? 

In  answer  to  the  former  question,  it  must  be  said  that 
in  the  developed  human  mind  there  are  springs  of  action 
of  another  class,  namely,  acquired  habits  of  thought  and 
action.  An  acquired  mode  of  activity  becomes  by  repe- 
tition habitual,  and  the  more  frequently  it  is  repeated 
the  more  powerful  becomes  the  habit  as  a source  of 
impulse  or  motive  power.  Few  habits  can  equal  in  this 
respect  the  principal  instincts  ; and  habits  are  in  a sense 
derived  from,  and  secondary  to,  instincts;  for,  in  the 
absence  of  instincts,  no  thought  and  no  action  could 
ever  be  achieved  or  repeated,  and  so  no  habits  of 
thought  or  action  could  be  formed.  Habits  are  formed 
only  in  the  service  of  the  instincts. 

The  answer  to  the  second  question  is  that  pleasure 
and  pain  are  not  in  themselves  springs  of  action,  but  at 
the  most  of  undirected  movements ; they  serve  rather  Jto 
modify  instinctive  processes,  pleasure  tending  to  sus- 
tain and  prolong  any  mode  of  action,  pain  to  cut  it 
short ; under  their  prompting  and  guidance  are  effected 
those  modifications  and  adaptations  of  the  instinctive 
bodily  movements  which  we  have  briefly  considered 
above.* 

' None  of  the  doctrines  of  the  associationist  psychology  was 
more  profoundly  misleading  and  led  to  greater  absurdities  than 
the  attempt  to  exhibit  pleasure  and  pain  as  the  source  of  all 
activities.  What  could  be  more  absurd  than  Professor  Bain’s 
doctrine  that  the  joy  of  a mother  in  her  child,  her  tender  care 
and  self-sacrificing  efforts  in  its  behalf,  are  due  to  the  pleasure 
she  derives  from  bodily  contact  with  it  in  the  maternal  embrace  ? 
Or  what  could  be  more  strained  and  opposed  to  hundreds  of 
familiar  facts  than  Herbert  Spencer’s  doctrine  that  the  emotion 
of  fear  provoked  by  any  object  consists  in  faint  revivals,  in  some 
strange  cluster,  of  ideas  of  all  the  pains  suffered  in  the  past  upon 


44 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


We  may  say,  then,  that  directly  or  indirectly  the 
I instincts  are  the  prime  movers  of  all  human  activity ; 

1 by  the  conative  or  impulsive  force  of  some  instinct  (or 
of  some  habit  derived  from  an  instinct),  every  train  of 
'thought,  however  cold  and  passionless  it  may  seem,  is 
I borne  along  towards  its  end,  and  every  bodily  activity 
j is  initiated  and  sustained.  The  instinctive  impulses 
^determine  the  ends  of  all  activities  and  supply  the 
driving  power  by  which  all  mental  activities  are  sus- 
tained ; and  all  the  complex  intellectual  apparatus  of 
the  most  highly  developed  mind  is  but  a means  towards 
these  ends,  is  but  the  instrument  by  which  these  im- 
pulses seek  their  satisfactions,  while  pleasure  and  pain 
do  but  serve  to  guide  them  in  their  choice  of  the 
means. 

Take  away  these  instinctive  dispositions  with  their 
powerful  impulses,  and  the  organism  would  become 
incapable  of  activity  of  any  kind  ; it  would  lie  inert 
and  motionless  like  a wonderful  clockwork  whose  main- 
spring had  been  removed  or  a steam-engine  whose  fires 
(had  been  drawn.  These  impulses  are  the  mental  forces 
that  maintain  and  shape  all  the  life  of  individuals  and 
' societies,  and  in  them  we  are  confronted  with  the  central 
mystery  of  life  and  mind  and  will 

The  following  chapters,  I hope,  will  render  clearer, 
and  will  give  some  support  to,  the  views  briefly  and 
somewhat  dogmatically  stated  in  the  present  chapter.^ 

contact  with,  or  in  the  presence  of,  that  object?  [cf.  Bain's  '' Emo- 
tions and  the  Will,''  chap.  vi. ; and  H.  Spencer’s  ‘^Principles  of 
Psychology,''  vol.  i.  part  iv.  chap.  viii.  3rd  Ed.) 

* For  a further  discussion  of  the  nature  of  instinct  the  reader 
may  be  referred  to  The  British  Joimial  of  Psychology^  vol.  iii., 
which  contains  papers  contributed  to  a symposium  on  Instinct 
and  Intelligence  by  Messrs.  C.  S.  Myers,  Lloyd  Morgan,  Wildon 
Carr,  G.  F.  Stout,  and  the  author. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  AND  THE  PRIMARY 
EMOTIONS  OF  MAN 

Before  we  can  make  any  solid  progress  in  the 
understanding  of  the  complex  emotions  and 
impulses  that  are  the  forces  underlying  the  thoughts 
and  actions  of  men  and  of  societiesyAve  must  be  able  to 
distinguish  and  describe  each  of  the  principal  human 
instincts  and  the  emotional  and  conative  tendencies 
characteristic  of  each  one  of  them.  This  task  will  be 
attempted  in  the  present  chapter;  in  Chapter  V.  we 
shall  seek  to  analyse  some  of  the  principal  complex 
emotions  and  impulses,  to  display  them  as  compounded 
from  the  limited  number  of  primary  or  simple  instinctive 
tendencies ; ^ and  in  the  succeeding  chapters  of  this 

* It  has  often  been  remarked  that  the  emotions  are  fluid  and 
indefinable,  that  they  are  in  perpetual  flux  and  are  experienced 
in  an  infinite  number  of  subtle  varieties.  This  truth  may  be 
used  as  an  argument  against  the  propriety  of  attempting  to  ex- 
hibit all  the  many  varieties  of  our  emotional  experience  as 
reducible  by  analysis  to  a small  number  of  distinct  primary  emo- 
tions. But  such  an  objection  would  be  ill-taken.  We  may  see 
an  instructive  parallel  in  the  case  of  our  colour-sensations.  The 
colour-sensations  present,  like  the  emotions,  an  indefinitely  great 
variety  of  qualities  shading  into  one  another  by  imperceptible 
gradations  ; but  this  fact  does  not  prevent  us  regarding  all  these 
many  delicate  varieties  as  reducible  by  analysis  to  a few  simple 
primary  qualities  from  which  they  are  formed  by  fusion,  or 
blending,  in  all  proportions.  Rather  it  is  the  indefinitely  great 

45 


46 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


section  we  shall  consider  the  way  in  which  these 
tendencies  become  organised  within  the  complex  dis- 
positions that  constitute  the  sentiments. 

In  the  foregoingchapter  it  was  said  that  the  instinctive 
mental  process  that  results  from  the  excitement  of  any 
instinct  has  always  an  affective  aspect,  the  nature  of 
which  depends  upon  the  constitution  of  that  most  stable 
and  unchanging  of  the  three  parts  of  the  instinctive 
disposition,  namely  the  central  part.  In  the  case  of  the 
simpler  instincts,  this  affective  aspect  of  the  instinctive 
process  is  not  prominent ; and  though,  no  doubt,  the 
quality  of  it  is  peculiar  in  each  case,  yet  we  cannot 
readily  distinguish  ''  ’ have  no 


principal  powerful  instincts,  the  affective  quality  of 
each  instinctive  process  and  the  sum  of  visceral  and 
bodily  changes  in  which  it  expresses  itself  are  peculiar 
and  distinct ; hence  language  provides  special  names 
for  such  modes  of  affective  experience,  names  such 
as  anger,  fear,  curiosity;  and  the  generic  name  for 
them  is  “ emotion.'^  The  word  “emotion”  is  used 

variety  of  colour  qualities,  their  subtle  gradations,  and  the  pecu- 
liar affinities  between  them,  that  justify  us  in  seeking  to  exhibit 
them  as  fusions  in  many  different  proportions  of  a few  primary 
qualities.  And  the  same  is  true  of  the  emotions. 

Of  course,  if  the  James- Lange  theory  of  the  emotions  is  true, 
then  each  of  the  primary  emotions  is  in  principle  not  an  ele- 
mentary affection  of  consciousness  or  mode  of  experience,  but 
a complex  of  organic  sensations  and  feeling  tone.  But  in  that 
case  the  conception  of  a primary  emotion,  and  the  propriety  of 
regarding  each  complex  emotion  as  a fusion  of  two  or  more 
primary  emotions,  are  not  invalidated.  For  the  primary  emotion 
must  be  regarded  (according  to  that  theory)  as  a complex  of 
organic  sensation  and  feeling  tone  which  is  constant  and  specific 
in  character,  its  nature  having  been  determined  and  fixed  by  the 
evolutionary  process  at  a very  remote  pre-human  period. 


special  names  for 


of  the 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  47 


of  course  in  popular  speech  loosely  and  somewhat 
vaguely,  and  psychologists  are  not  yet  completely 
consistent  in  their  use  of  it.  But  all  psychological 
terms  that  are  taken  from  common  speech  have  to 
undergo  a certain  specialisation  and  more  rigid  de- 
finition before  they  are  fit  for  scientific  use;  and  in 
using  the  word  “ emotion  ” in  the  restricted  sense 
which  is  indicated  above,  and  which  will  be  rigidly 
adhered  to  throughout  these  pages,  I am  but  carrying 
to  its  logical  conclusion  a tendency  displayed  by  the 
majority  of  recent  English  writers  on  psychology. 
y/Each  of  the  principal  instincts  conditions,  then,  some 
one  kind  of  emotional  excitement  whose  quality  is 
specific  or  peculiar  to  it ; and  the  emotional  excitement 
of  specific  quality  that  is  the  affective  aspect  of  the 
operation  of  any  one  of  the  principal  instincts  may  be 
called  a primary^ifiption.  This  principle,  which  was 
enunciated  in  my  little  work  on  physiological  psychology, 
proves  to  be  of  very  great  value  when  we  seek  to 
analyse  the  complex  emotions  into  their  primary  con- 
stituents. Several  writers  have  come  very  near  to 
the  recognition  of  this  principle,  but  few  or  none  of 
them  have  stated  it  clearly  and  explicitly,  and,  what  is 
more  important,  they  have  not  systematically  applied 
it  in  any  thoroughgoing  manner  as  the  guiding  principle 
on  which  we  must  chiefly  rely  in  seeking  to  define  the 
primary  emotions  and  to  unravel  the  complexities  of 
our  concrete  emotional  experiences.^ 

* Primer  of  Physiological  Psychology,”  1905.  That  the 
principle  is  not  generally  recognised  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  in 
Baldwin’s  Dictionary  of  Philosophy  and  Psychology  (1901)  no 
mention  is  made  of  any  intimate  relation  between  emotion  and 
instinct ; we  are  there  told  that  no  adequate  psychological  defini- 
tion of  instinct  is  possible,  since  the  psychological  state  involved 
is  exhausted  by  the  terms  sensation  ” (and  also  perception  ”), 

instinct,”  feeling,”  and  ^Mmpulse”;  and  instinct  is  defined 


.48 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


In  adapting  to  scientific  use  a word  from  popular 
speech,  it  is  inevitable  that  some  violence  should  be 
done  to  common  usage  ; and,  in  adopting  this  rigid 
definition  of  emotion,  we  shall  have  to  do  such  violence 
in  refusing  to  admit  joji  sorrow,  and  surprise  (which 
are  often  regarded,  even  by  writers  on  psychology, 
as  the  very  types  of  emotions)  to  our  list  whether  of 
simple  and  primary  or  of  complex  emotions.  Some 
arguments  in  justification  of  this  exclusion  will  be 
adduced  later.  At  this  stage  I will  only  point  out 
that  joy  and  sorrow  are  not  emotional  states  that  can 
be  experienced  independently  of  the  true  emotions,  that 
in  every  case  they  are  qualifications  of  the  emotions 
they  accompany,  and  that  in  strictness  we  ought  rather 
to.  speak  always  of  a j.oyfu]_pr  sorrowful  emotion — e.g,^ 
a joyful  wonder  or  gratitude,  a sorrowful  anger  or  pity. 

In  considering  the  claim  of  any  human  emotion 
or  impulse  to  rank  as  a primary  emotion  or  simple 
instinctive  impulse,  we  shall  find  two  principles  of  great 

as  inherited  reaction  of  the  sensori-motor  type,  relatively 
complex  and  markedly  adaptive  in  character,  and  common  to  a 
group  of  individuals.’*  Professor  James,  who  treats  of  the  in- 
stincts and  the  emotions  in  successive  chapters,  comes  very 
near  to  the  recognition  of  the  principle  laid  down  above,  without, 
however,  explicitly  stating  it.  Others  who  have  recognised — more 
or  less  explicitly — this  relation  between  instinct  and  emotion  are 
Schneider  Der  thierische  Wille  ”),  Ribot  Psychologic  des 
Sentiments  ”),  and  Rutgers  Marshal  Pain,  Pleasure,  and 
i^^sthetics,”  and  ''Instinct  and  Reason”) 

Mr.  Shand  (Chapter  xvi.,  Stout’s  "Groundwork  of  Psychology”) 
has  rightly  insisted  upon  the  impossibility  of  analysing  the  com- 
plex emotions  by  unaided  introspection,  and  has  laid  down  the 
principle  that  we  must  rely  largely  on  the  observation  of  their 
motor  tendencies.  But  he  has  not  combined  this  sound  methodo- 
logical suggestion  with  the  recognition  of  the  above-mentioned 
guiding  principle.  It  is  on  this  combination  that  I rely  in  the 
present  chapter. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  49 


assistance.  if  a similar  emotion  and  impulse  are 

clearly  displayed  in  the  instinctive  activities  of  the 
higher  animals,  that  fact  will  afford  a strong  presump- 
tion that  the  emotion  and  impulse  in  question  are 
primary  and  simple  ; on  the  other  hand,  if  no  such  in- 
stinctive activity  occurs  among  the  higher  animals,  we 
must  suspect  the  affective  state  in  question  of  being  either 
a complex  composite  emotion  or  no  true  emotion. 
Secondly,  we  must  inquire  in  each  case  whether  the 
emotion  and  impulse  in  question  occasionally  appear 
in  human  beings  with  morbidly  exaggerated  intensity, 
apart  from  such  general  hyper-excitability  as  is  dis- 
N played  in  mania.  For  it  would  seem  that  each  in- 
\stinctive  disposition,  being  a relatively  independent 
functional  unit  in  the  constitution  of  the  mind,  is  capable 
of  morbid  hypertrophy  or  of  becoming  abnormally 
excitable,  independently  of  the  rest  of  the  mental  dis- 
positions and  functions.  That  is  to  say,  we  must  look  to 
comparative  psychology  and  to  mental  paApJpgy^^f^^ 
confirmation  _pf_ character  of  those  of  our 
to  be  simple  and  unanalysable.^ 

The  Instinct  of  Flight  and  the  Emotion  of  Fear 
The  instinct  to  flee  from  danger  is  necessary  for 
the  survival  of  almost  all  species  of  animals,  and  in 


* That  the  emotion  as  a fact  of  consciousness  may  properly  be 
distinguished  from  the  cognitive  process  which  it  accompanies  and 
qualifies  is,  I think,  obvious  and  indisputable.  The  propriety  of 
distinguishing  between  the  conative  element  in  consciousness,  the 
impulse,  appetite,  desire,  or  aversion,  and  the  accompanying 
emotion  is  not  so  obvious.  For  these  features  are  most  intimately 
and  constantly  associated,  and  introspective  discrimination  of 
them  is  usually  difficult.  Nevertheless  they  show  a certain 
degree  of  independence  of  one  another ; with  frequent  re- 
petition of  a particular  emotional  situation  and  reaction,  the 
affective  aspect  of  the  process  tends  to  become  less  prominent, 
while  the  impulse  grows  stronger. 

B 


50 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


most  of  the  higher  animals  the  instinct  is  one  of  the 
most  powerful.  Upon  its  excitement  the  locomotory 
apparatus  is  impelled  to  its  utmost  exertions,  and  some- 
times the  intensity  and  long  duration  of  these  exertions 
is  more  than  the  visceral  organs  can  support,  so  that 
they  are  terminated  by  utter  exhaustion  or  death.  Men 
also  have  been  known  to  achieve  extraordinary  feats  of 
running  and  leaping  under  this  impulse;  there  is  a well- 
known  story  of  a great  athlete  who,  when  pursued  as 
a boy  by  a savage  animal,  leaped  over  a wall  which  he 
could  not  again  clear  until  he  attained  his  full 
stature  and  strength.  These  locomotory  activities  are 
accompanied  by  a characteristic  complex  of  symptoms, 
which  in  its  main  features  is  common  to  man  and 
to  many  of  the  higher  animals,  and  which,  in  conjunc- 
tion with  the  violent  efforts  to  escape,  constitutes  so 
unmistakable  an  expression  of  the  emotion  of  fear  that 
no  one  hesitates  to  interpret  it  as  such  ; hence  popular 
speech  recognises  the  connection  of  the  emotion  with 
the  instinct  that  determines  the  movements  of  flight  in 
giving  them  the  one  name  fear.  Terror,  the  most 
intense  degree  of  this  emotion,  may  involve  so  great 
a nervous  disturbance,  both  in  men  and  animals,  as  to 
defeat  the  ends  of  the  instinct  by  inducing  general 
convulsions  or  even  death.  In  certain  cases  of  mental 
disease  the  patient’s  disorder  seems  to  consist  essentially 
in  an  abnormal  excitability  of  this  instinct  and  a con- 
sequent undue  frequency  and  intensity  of  its  operation  ; 
the  patient  lives  perpetually  in  fear,  shrinking  in  terror 
from  the  most  harmless  animal  or  at  the  least  unusual 
sound,  and  surrounds  himself  with  safeguards  against 
impossible  dangers. 

y\w  most  animals  this  instinct  may  be  excited  by 
a variety  of  objects  and  sense-impressions  prior  to 
all  experience  of  hurt  or  danger ; that  is  to  say,  the  in- 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  51 


nate  disposition  has  several  afferent  inlets.  In  some 
of  the  more  timid  creatures  it  would  seem  that  evj^y 
unfamiliar  sound  or  sight  is  capable  of  exciting  it.^  An 
civilised  man,  whose  life  for  so  many  generations  has 
been  more  or  less  sheltered  from  the  dangers  peculiar  to 
the  natural  state,  the  instinct  exhibits  (like  all  complex 
organs  and  functions  that  are  not  kept  true  to  the 
specific  type  by  rigid  selection)  considerable  individual 
differences,  especially  on  its  receptive  side.  Hence  it  is 
difficult  to  discover  what  objects  and  impressions  were 
its  natural  excitants  in  primitive  man.  The  wail  of  the 
jvery  young  infant  has  but  little  variety ; but  mothers 
claim  to  be  able  to  distinguish  the  cries  of  fear,  of  anger, 
(and  of  bodily  discomfort,  at  a very  early  age,  and  it  is 

modes  of  reaction  become 


that  of  the  cry,  whose  function  is  merely  to  signal  to  the 
the  need  for  her  ministrations.  In  most  young 
children  unmistakable  fear  is  provoked  by  any  sudden 
loud  noise  (some  being  especially  sensitive  to  harsh 
deep-pitched  noises  even  though  of  low  intensity),  and 
all  through  life  such  noise  remains  for  many  of  us  the 
surest  and  most  frequent  excitant  of  the  instinct. 
Other  children,  while  still  in  arms,  show  fear  if  held 
too  loosely  when  carried  downstairs,  or  if  the  arms  that 
hold  them  are  suddenly  lowered.  In  some,  intense  fear 
is  excited  on  their  first  introduction  at  close  quarters  to 
a dog  or  cat,  no  matter  how  quiet  and  well-behaved  the 
animal  may  be ; and  some  of  us  continue  all  through 
life  to  experience  a little  thrill  of  fear  whenever  a 
dog  runs  out  and  barks  at  our  heels,  though  we  may 
never  have  received  any  hurt  from  an  animal  and  may 

* It  may  be  noted  in  passing  that  this  is  one  of  a class  of  facts 
which  offers  very  great  difficulty  to  any  attempt  to  account  for 
instinctive  action  on  purely  mechanical  principles. 


differentiated  from  a single  instinctive  impulse. 


UNIVERSITY  OF 
ILLINOIS  LIBRARY 


52 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


have  perfect  confidence  that  no  hurt  is  likely  to  be 
done  us.i 

* Lest  any  reader  should  infer,  from  what  is  said  above  of  the 
immediate  and  often  irrational  character  of  our  emotional 
responses  upon  the  reception  of  certain  sense-impressions,  that 
I accept  the  James- Lange  theory  of  emotion  in  the  extreme 
form  in  which  it  is  stated  by  Professor  James,  I would  point 
out  that  the  acceptance  of  the  theory  is  by  no  means  implied  by 
my  treatment  of  emotion.  In  the  course  of  the  discussion  of  in- 
stinct in  the  preceding  chapter,  it  was  expressly  stated  that  the 
instinctive  process  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  merely  a compound 
reflex,  initiated  by  crude  sensation,  but  that  its  first  stage  always 
involves  distinct  cognition,  which,  in  the  case  of  purely  instinctive 
action,  is  always  a sense-perception.  That  is  to  say,  the  sense-im- 
pressions must  undergo  the  psychical  elaboration  and  synthesis 
implied  by  the  word  perception”  ; but  such  perceptual  elabora- 
tion is  in  every  case  only  rendered  possible  by  the  activities  of  a 
preformed  psycho-physical  disposition,  which  in  the  case  of  the 
purely  instinctive  action  is  innately  organised.  Professor  Ward  has 
effectively  criticised  the  James-Lange  theory  (Art.  Psychology” 
in  supplementary  volumes  of  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,”  9th 
edition),  and  I would  in  the  main  endorse  that  criticism,  though 
I think  Professor  Ward  does  not  sufficiently  recognise  that  our 
emotional  responses  are  bound  up  with,  and  in  many  cases  are  im- 
mediately determined  by,  simple  perceptions.  He  writes  : Let 

Professor  James  be  confronted  first  by  a chained  bear  and  next 
by  a bear  at  large  : to  the  one  object  he  presents  a bun,  and  to 
the  other  a clean  pair  of  heels.”  This  passage  seems  by  implica- 
tion to  ignore  the  truth  I wish  especially  to  insist  upon,  namely, 
the  immediacy  with  which  the  emotional  response  follows  upon 
perception,  if  the  perceptual  disposition  involved  is  a part  of  the 
instinctive  disposition,  or  if  it  has  become  connected  with  its 
central  part  as  an  acquired  afferent  inlet  in  the  way  discussed  in 
Chapter  IL  There  is  a world  of  difference  between,  on  the  one 
hand,  the  instinctive  response  to  the  object  that  excites  fear,  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  running  away  because  one  judges  that  discre- 
tion is  the  better  part  of  valour.  I well  remember  standing  in  the 
zoological  garden  at  Calcutta  before  a very  strong  cage  in  which 
was  a huge  Bengal  tiger  fresh  from  the  jungle.  A low-caste 
Hindu  sweeper  had  amused  himself  by  teasing  the  monster,  and 
every  time  he  came  near  the  cage  the  tiger  bounded  forward 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  53 


In  other  persons,  again,  fear  is  excited  by  the  noise  of 
a high  wind,  and  though  they  may  be  in  a solidly  built 
house  that  has  weathered  a hundred  storms,  they  will 
walk  restlessly  to  and  fro  throughout  every  stormy  night. 
^In  most  animals  instinctive  flight  is  followed  by 
equally  instinctive  concealment  as  soon  as  cover  is 
reached,  and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  in  primitive 
man  the  instinct  had  this  double  tendency.  As  soon 
as  the  little  child  can  run,  his  fear  expresses  itself  in 
concealment  following  on  flight ; and  the  many  adult 
persons  who  seek  refuge  from  the  strange  noises  of  dark 
nights,  or  from  a thunderstorm,  by  covering  their  heads 
with  the  bed-clothes,  and  who  find  a quite  irrational 
comfort  in  so  doing,  illustrate  the  persistence  of  this 
tendency.  It  is,  perhaps,  in  the  opposed  characters  of 
these  two  tendencies,  both  of  which  are  bound  up  with 
the  emotion  of  fear,  that  we  may  find  an  explanation  of 
the  great  variety  of,  and  variability  of,  the  symptoms  of 
fear.  The  sudden  stopping  of  heart-beat  and  respira- 
tion, and  the  paralysis  of  movement  in  which  it  some- 
times finds  expression,  are  due  to  the  impulse  to 
concealment ; the  hurried  respiration  and  pulse,  and  the 
frantic  bodily  efforts,  by  which  it  is  more  commonly 
expressed,  are  due  to  the  impulse  to  flight.* 

with  an  awful  roar.  At  each  of  many  repetitions  of  this  perform- 
ance a cold  shudder  of  fear  passed  over  me,  and  only  by  an 
effort  could  1 restrain  the  impulse  to  beat  a hasty  retreat. 
Though  I knew  the  bars  confined  the  brute  more  securely  than 
any  chain,  it  was  not  because  the  emotion  of  fear  and  the  corres- 
ponding impulse  were  lacking  that  I did  not  show  a clean  pair 
of  heels."' 

* It  is  worth  noting  that,  if  the  emotional  accompaniment  of 
these  two  very  different  sets  of  bodily  symptoms  seems  to  have 
essentially  the  same  quality  in  the  two  cases  and  to  be  unmistak- 
ably fear,  this  fact  is  very  difficult  to  reconcile  with  the  James- 
Lange  theory  of  emotion  interpreted  in  a literal  fashion. 


54 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


-^hat  the  excitement  of  fear  is  not  necessarily,  or 
indeed  usually,  the  effect  of  an  intelligent  appreciation 
or  anticipation  of  danger,  is  especially  well  shown  by 
children  of  four  or  five  years  of  age,  in  whom  it  may  be 
induced  by  the  facial  contortions  or  playful  roarings  of 
a familiar  friend.  Under  these  circumstances,  a child 
may  exhibit  every  symptom  of  fear  even  while  he  sits 
upon  his  tormentor’s  lap  and,  with  arms  about  his  neck, 
beseeches  him  to  cease  or  to  promise  not  to  do  it  again. 
And  many  a child  has  been  thrown  into  a paroxysm  of 
terror  by  the  approach  of  some  hideous  figure  that  he 
knew  to  be  but  one  of  his  playfellows  in  disguise. 

all  the  excitants  of  this  instinct  the  most  interest- 
ing, and  the  most  difficult  to  understand  as  regards  its 
mode  of  operation,  is  the  unfamiliar  or  strange  as  such. 
Whatever  is  totally  strange,  whatever  is  violently 
opposed  to  the  accustomed  and  familiar,  is  apt  to  excite 
fear  both  in  men  and  animals,  if  only  it  is  capable  of 
attracting  their  attention.  It  is,  I think,  doubtful 
whether  an  eclipse  of  the  moon  has  ever  excited  the  fear 
of  animals,  for  the  moon  is  not  an  object  of  their  atten- 
tion ; but  for  savage  men  it  has  always  been  an  occasion 
of  fear.  The  well-known  case  of  the  dog  described  by 
Romanes,  that  was  terrified  by  the  movements  of  an 
object  jerked  forward  by  an  invisible  thread,  illustrates 
the  fear-exciting  powers  of  the  unfamiliar  in  the  animal 
world.  The  following  incident  is  instructive  in  this 
respect : A courageous  child  of  five  years,  sitting  alone 
in  a sunlit  room,  suddenly  screams  in  terror,  and,  on  her 
father  hastening  to  her,  can  only  explain  that  she  saw 
something  move.  The  discovery  of  a mouse  in  the 
corner  of  the  room  at  once  explains  and  banishes  her 
fear,  for  she  is  on  friendly  terms  with  mice.  The  mouse 
must  have  darted  across  the  peripheral  part  of  her  field 
of  vision,  and  this  unexpected  and  unfamiliar  appear- 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  55 


ance  of  movement  sufficed  to  excite  the  instinct.  -^This 
avenue  to  the  instinct,  the  unfamiliar,  becomes  in  man 
highly  diversified  and  intellectualised,  and  it  is  owing  to 
this  that  he  feels  fear  before  the  mysterious,  the  un- 
canny, and  the  supernatural,  and  that  fear,  entering  as  1 
an  element  into  the  complex  emotions  of  awe  and  [ 
reverence,  plays  its  part  in  all  religions. 

Fear,  whetherits  impulse  be  to  flight  or  to  concealment, 
is  characterised  by  the  fact  that  its  excitement,  more 
than  that  of  any  other  instinct,  tends  to  bring  to  an  end 
at  once  all  other  mental  activity,  riveting  the  attention 
upon  its  object  to  the  exclusion  of  all  others;  owing, 
probably,  to  this  extreme  concentration  of  attention,  as 
well  as  to  the  violence  of  the  emotion,  the  excitement  of 
this  instinct  makes  a deep  and  lasting  impression  on  the 
mind.  A gust  of  anger,  a wave  of  pity  or  of  tender 
emotion,  an  impulse  of  curiosity,  may  co-operate  in 
supporting  and  re-enforcing  mental  activities  of  the 
most  varied  kinds,  or  may  dominate  the  mind  for  a time 
and  then  pass  away,  leaving  but  little  trace.  But  fear, 
once  roused,  haunts  the  mind  ; it  comes  back  alike  in 
dreams  and  in  waking  life,  bringing  with  it  vivid 
memories  of  the  terrifying  impression.  It  is  thus  the 
great  inhibitor  of  action,  both  present  action  and  future 
action,  and  becomes  in  primitive  human  societies  the 
great  agent  of  social  discipline  through  which  men 
are  led  to  the  habit  of  control  of  the  egoistic  impulses, 

T/te  Instinct  of  Repulsion  and  the  Emotion  of  Disgust 

The  impulse  of  this  instinct  is,  like  that  of  fear,  one 
of  aversion,  and  these  two  instincts  together  account 
probably  for  all  aversions,  except  those  acquired  under 
the  influence  of  pain.  The  impulse  differs  from  that  of 
fear  in  that,  while  the  latter  prompts  to  bodily  retreat 


5^ 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


from  its  object,  the  former  prompts  to  actions  that 
remove  or  reject  the  offending  object.  This  instinct 
resembles  fear  in  that  under  the  one  name  we,  perhaps, 
commonly  confuse  two  very  closely  allied  instincts 
whose  affective  aspects  are  so  similar  that  they  are  not 
easily  distinguishable,  though  their  impulses  are  of 
different  tendencies.  The  one  impulse  of  repulsion  is  to 
reject  from  the  mouth  substances  that  excite  the  instinct 
in  virtue  of  their  odour  or  taste,  substances  which  in  the 
main  are  noxious  and  evil-tasting  ; its  biological  utility 
is  obvious.  The  other  impulse  of  repulsion  seems  to  be 
excited  by  the  contact  of  slimy  and  slippery  substances 
with  the  skin,  and  to  express  itself  as  a shrinking  of  the 
whole  body,  accompanied  by  a throwing  forward  of  the 
hands.  The  common  shrinking  from  slimy  creatures 
with  a “ creepy  ” shudder  seems  to  be  the  expression  of 
this  impulse.  It  is  difficult  to  assign  any  high  biological 
value  to  it  (unless  we  connect  it  with  the  necessity  of 
avoiding  noxious  reptiles),  but  it  is  clearly  displayed  by 
some  children  before  the  end  of  their  first  year ; thus  in 
some  infants  furry  things  excite  shrinking  and  tears  at 
their  first  contact.  In  others  the  instinct  seems  to 
ripen  later,  and  the  child  that  has  handled  worms,  frogs, 
and  slugs  with  delight  suddenly  evinces  an  unconquer- 
able aversion  to  contact  with  them. 

-^^hese  two  forms  of  disgust  illustrate  in  the  clearest 
and  most  interesting  manner  the  intellectualisation  of 
the  instincts  and  primary  emotions  through  extension  of 
the  range  of  their  objects  by  association,  resemblance, 
and  analogy.  The  manners  or  speech  of  an  otherwise 
presentable  person  may  excite  the  impulse  of  shrinking 
in  virtue  of  some  subtle  suggestion  of  sliminess.  Or 
what  we  know  of  a man’s  character — that  it  is  noxious,or, 
as  we  significantly  say,  is  of  evil  odour — may  render  the 
mere  thought  of  him  an  occasion  of  disgust ; we  say,  “ It 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  57 


makes  me  sick  to  think  of  him” ; and  at  the  same  time 
the  face  exhibits  in  some  degree,  however  slight,  the 
expression  produced  by  the  act  of  rejection  of  some  evil- 
tasting substance  from  the  mouth.  In  these  cases  we 
may  see  very  clearly  that  this  extension  by  resemblance 
or  analogy  does  not  take  place  in  any  roundabout 
fashion ; it  is  not  that  the  thought  of  the  noxious  or 
“slippery  ” character  necessarily  reproduces  the  idea  of 
some  evil-tasting  substance  or  of  some  slimy  creature. 
Rather,  the  apprehension  of  these  peculiarities  of 
character  excites  disgust  directly,  and  then,  when  we 
seek  to  account  for,  and  to  justify,  our  disgust,  we  cast 
about  for  some  simile  and  say,  “He  is  like  a snake,” 
or  “ He  is  rotten  to  the  core!”  The  common  form  of 
emotion  serves  as  the  link  between  the  two  ideas. 


The  Instinct  of  Curiosity  and  the  Emotion  of  Wonder 

The  instinct  of  curiosity  is  displayed  by  many  of  the 
higher  animals,  although  its  impulse  remains  relatively 
feeble  in  most  of  them.  And,  in  fact,  it  is  obvious  that  it 
could  not  easily  attain  any  considerable  strength  in  any 
animal  species,  because  the  individuals  that  displayed 
a too  strong  curiosity  would  be  peculiarly  liable  to  meet 
an  untimely  end.  For  its  impulse  is  to  approach  and 
to  examine  more  closely  the  object  that  excites  it — a 
fact  well  known  to  hunters  in  the  wilds,  who  sometimes 
by  exciting  this  instinct  bring  the  curious  animal  within 
the  reach  of  their  weapons.  The  native  excitant  of  the 
instinct  would  seem  to  be  any  object  similar  to,  yet 
perceptibly  different  from,  familiar  objects  habitually 
noticed.  It  is  therefore  not  easy  to  distinguish  in 
general  terms  between  the  excitants  of  curiosity  and 
those  of  fear ; for  we  have  seen  that  one  of  the  most 
general  excitants  of  fear  is  whatever  is  strange  or 


58 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


unfamiliar.  The  difference  seems  to  be  mainly  one 
of  degree,  a smaller  element  of  the  strange  or  unusual 
exciting  curiosity,  while  a larger  and  more  pronounced 
degree  of  it  excites  fear.  Hence  the  two  instincts,  with 
their  opposed  impulses  of  approach  and  retreat,  are  apt 
to  be  excited  in  animals  and  very  young  children  in 
rapid  alternation,  and  simultaneously  in  ourselves. 
Who  has  not  seen  a horse,  or  other  animal,  alter- 
nately approach  in  curiosity,  and  flee  in  fear  from, 
some  such  object  as  an  old  coat  upon  the  ground? 
And  who  has  not  experienced  a fearful  curiosity  in 
penetrating  some  dark  cave  or  some  secret  chamber  of 
an  ancient  castle  ? The  behaviour  of  animals  under  the 
impulse  of  curiosity  may  be  well  observed  by  any  one 
who  will  lie  down  in  a field  where  sheep  or  cattle  are 
grazing  and  repeat  at  short  intervals  some  peculiar  cry. 
In  this  way  one  may  draw  every  member  of  a large 
flock  nearer  and  nearer,  until  one  finds  oneself  the  centre 
of  a circle  of  them,  drawn  up  at  a respectful  distance,  of 
which  every  pair  of  eyes  and  ears  is  intently  fixed  upon 
the  strange  object  of  their  curiosity. 

In  the  animals  nearest  to  ourselves,  namely,  the 
monkeys,  curiosity  is  notoriously  strong,  and  them  it 
impels  not  merely  to  approach  its  object  and  to  direct 
the  senses  attentively  upon  it,  but  also  to  active  mani- 
pulation of  it.  That  a similar  impulse  is  strong  in 
children,  no  one  will  deny.  Exception  may  perhaps  be 
taken  to  the  use  of  wonder  as  the  name  for  the  primary 
emotion  that  accompanies  this  impulse ; for  this  word  is 
commonly  applied  to  a complex  emotion  of  which  this 
primary  emotion  is  the  chief  but  not  the  sole  con- 
stituent* But,  as  was  said  above,  some  specialisation 
for  technical  purposes  of  words  in  common  use  is  inevit- 

* A form  of  admiration  in  which  curiosity  (or  wonder  in  the 
sense  in  which  the  word  is  here  used)  predominates  (see  chap,  v.). 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  59 


able  in  psychology,  and  in  this  instance  it  is,  I think, 
desirable  and  justifiable,  owing  to  the  lack  of  any  more 
appropriate  word. 

This  instinct,  being  one  whose  exercise  is  not  of  prime  ? 
importance  to  the  individual,  exhibits  great  individual 
differences  as  regards  its  innate  strength  ; and  these 
differences  are  apt  to  be  increased  during  the  course 
of  life,  the  impulse  growing  weaker  for  lack  of  use  in 
those  in  whom  it  is  innately  weak,  stronger  through 
exercise  in  those  in  whom  it  is  innately  strong.  In  men 
of  the  latter  type  it  may  become  the  main  source  of 
intellectual  energy  and  effort;  to  its  impulse  we 
certainly  owe  most  of  the  purely  disinterested  labours 
of  the  highest  types  of  intellect.  It  must  be  regarded 
as  one  of  the  principal  roots  of  both  science  and 
'!  religion. 

Tke  Instinct  of  Pugnacity  and  the  Emotion  of  Anger 

This  instinct,  though  not  so  nearly  universal  as  fear, 
being  apparently  lacking  in  the  constitution  of  the 
females  of  some  species,  ranks  with  fear  as  regards  the 
great  strength  of  its  impulse  and  the  high  intensity  of 
the  emotion  it  generates.  It  occupies  a peculiar  posi- 
tion in  relation  to  the  other  instincts,  and  cannot  strictly 
be  brought  under  the  definition  of  instinct  proposed  in 
the  first  chapter.  For  it  has  no  specific  object  or  objects 
the  perception  of  which  constitutes  the  initial  stage  of 
the  instinctive  process.  The  condition  of  its  excitement 
is  rather  any  opposition  to  the  free  exercise  of  any 
impulse,  any  obstruction  to  the  activity  to  which  the 
creature  is  impelled  by  any  one  of  the  other  instincts.^? 

* It  may  be  objected  that,  if  a man  strikes  me  a sudden  and 
unprovoked  blow,  my  anger  is  effectually  and  instantaneously 
aroused,  even  when  I am  at  the  moment  not  actively  engaged  in 
any  way ; for  it  may  be  said  that  in  this  case  the  blow  does  not 


6o 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


And  its  impulse  is  to  break  down  any  such  obstruc- 
tion and  to  destroy  whatever  offers  this  opposition. 
This  instinct  thus  presupposes  the  others ; its  ex- 
citement is  dependent  upon,  or  secondary  to,  the 
excitement  of  the  others,  and  is  apt  to  be  intense 
in  proportion  to  the  strength  of  the  obstructed 
impulse.  The  most  mean-spirited  cur  will  angrily 
resent  any  attempt  to  take  away  its  bone,  if  it 
is  hungry ; a healthy  infant  very  early  displays 
anger,  if  his  meal  is  interrupted  ; and  all  through  life 
most  men  find  it  difficult  to  suppress  irritation  on  similar 
occasions.  ^In  the  animal  world  the  most  furious  excite- 
ment of  this  instinct  is  provoked  in  the  male  of  many 
species  by  any  interference  with  the  satisfaction  of  the 
sexual  impulse ; since  such  interference  is  the  most 
frequent  occasion  of  its  excitement,  and  since  it  com- 
monly comes  from  other  male  members  of  his  own 
species,  the  actions  innately  organised  for  securing  the 
ends  of  this  instinct  are  such  actions  as  are  most  effec- 
tive in  combat  with  his  fellows.  Hence,  also,  the  de- 
fensive apparatus  of  the  male  is  usually,  like  the  lion’s 
or  the  stallion’s  mane,  especially  adapted  for  defence 
against  the  attacks  of  his  fellows.  <^ut  the  obstruction 

obstruct  or  oppose  any  impulse  working  within  me  at  the  moment. 
To  raise  this  objection  would  be  to  ignore  my  consciousness  of 
the  personal  relation  and  my  personal  attitude  towards  the  striker. 
The  impulse,  the  thwarting  of  which  in  this  case  provokes  my 
anger,  is  the  impulse  of  self-assertion,  which  is  habitually  in  play 
during  personal  intercourse.  That  this  is  the  case  we  may  see  on 
reflecting  that  anger  would  not  be  aroused  if  the  blow  came  from 
a purely  impersonal  source — if,  for  example,  it  came  from  a falling 
branch,  or  if  the  blow  received  from  a person  were  clearly  quite 
accidental  and  unavoidable  under  the  circumstances.  Anger  at 
the  stupidity  of  others  might  also  be  quoted  as  an  instance  not 
conformable  to  the  law ; but  it  is  only  when  such  stupidity  hinders 
the  execution  of  some  plan  that  the  normal  man  is  angered  by  it. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  6i 


of  every  other  instinctive  impulse  may  in  its  turn  become 
the  occasion  of  anger.  We  see  how  among  the  animals 
even  the  fear-impulse,  the  most  opposed  in  tendency  to 
the  pugnacious,  may  on  obstruction  give  place  to  it ; 
for  the  hunted  creature  when  brought  to  bay — when 
its  impulse  to  flight  is  obstructed — is  apt  to  turn  upon 
its  pursuers  and  to  fight  furiously,  until  an  opportunity 
for  escape  presents  itself. 

Darwin  has  shown  the  significance  of  the  facial 
expression  of  anger,  of  the  contracted  brow  and  raised 
upper  lip  ; and  man  shares  with  many  of  the  animals 
the  tendency  to  frighten  his  opponent  by  loud  roars  or 
bellowings.  As  with  most  of  the  other  human  instincts, 
the  excitement  of  this  one  is  expressed  in  its  purest 
form  by  children.  Many  a little  boy  has,  without  any 
example  or  suggestion,  suddenly  taken  to  running  with 
open  mouth  to  bite  the  person  who  has  angered  him, 
much  to  the  distress  of  his  parents.  As  the  child  grows 
up,  as  self-control  becomes  stronger,  the  life  of  ideas 
richer,  and  the  means  we  take  to  overcome  obstructions 
to  our  efforts  more  refined  and  complex,  this  instinct 
ceases  to  express  itself  in  its  crude  natural  manner,  save 
when  most  intensely  excited,  and  becomes  rather  a 
source  of  increased  energy  of  action  towards  the  end 
set  by  any  other  instinct ; the  energy  of  its  impulse 
adds  itself  to  and  reinforces  that  of  other  impulses  and 
so  helps  us  to  overcome  our  difficulties.  In  this  lies  its 
great  value  for  civilised  man.  A man  devoid  of  the 
pugnacious  instinct  would  not  only  be  incapable  of 
anger,  but  would  lack  this  great  source  of  reserve  energy 
which  is  called  into  play  in  most  of  us  by  any  difficulty 
in  our  path.  In  this  respect  also  it  is  the  opposite 
of  fear,  which  tends  to  inhibit  all  other  impulses  than 
its  own. 


62 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


The  Instincts  of  Self  abasement  (or  Subjection)  and  of 
Self  assertion  {or  Self  display)^  and  the  Emotions  of 
Subjection  and  Elation  {or  Negative  and  Positive 
Selffeeling) 

These  two  instincts  have  attracted  little  attention,  and 
the  two  corresponding  emotions  have,  so  far  as  I know, 
been  adequately  recognised  by  M.  Ribot  alone, ^ whom 
I follow  in  placing  them  among  the  primary  emotions. 
Ribot  names  the  two  emotions  negative  and  positive 
self-feeling  respectively,  but  since  these  names  are 
awkward  in  English,  I propose,  in  the  interests  of  a 
consistent  terminology,  to  call  them  the  emotions  of 
subjection  and  elation.  ^ The  clear  recognition  and 
understanding  of  these  instincts,  more  especially  of  the 
instinct  of  self-display,  is  of  the  first  importance  for  the 
psychology  of  character  and  volition,  as  I hope  to  show 
in  a later  chapter.  | At  present  I am  only  concerned  to 
prove  that  they  have  a place  in  the  native  constitution 
of  the  human  mind. 

/The  instinct  of  self-display  is  m.anifested  by  many  of 
the  higher  social  or  gregarious  animals,  especially,  per- 
haps, though  not  only,  at  the  time  of  mating.  Perhaps 
among  mammals  the  horse  displays  it  most  clearly. 
The  muscles  of  all  parts  are  strongly  innervated,  the 
creature  holds  himself  erect,  his  neck  is  arched,  his  tail 
lifted,  his  motions  become  superfluously  vigorous  and 
extensive,  he  lifts  his  hoofs  high  in  air,  as  he  parades 
before  the  eyes  of  his  fellows.  Many  animals,  especially 
the  birds,  but  also  some  of  the  monkeys,  are  provided 
with  organs  of  display  that  are  specially  disposed  on 
these  occasions.  Such  are  the  tail  of  the  peacock  and 
the  beautiful  breast  of  the  pigeon.  The  instinct  is 
essentially  a social  one,  and  is  only  brought  into  play 

* Psychology  of  the  Emotions,”  p.  240. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  63 


by  the  presence  of  spectators.  Such  self-display  is 
popularly  recognised  as  implying  pride  ; we  say  “ How 
proud  he  looks!"'  and  the  peacock  has  become  the 
symbol  of  pride.  By  psychologists  pride  is  usually 
denied  the  animals,  because  it  is  held  to  imply  self- 
consciousness,  and  that,  save  of  the  most  rudimentary 
kind,  they  probably  have  not.  But  this  denial  arises 
from  the  current  confusion  of  the  emotions  and  the  senti- 
ments. The  word  “ pride  ” is  no  doubt  most  properly 
to  be  used  as  the  name  of  one  form  of  the  self-regarding 
sentiment,  and  such  sentiment  does  imply  a developed 
self-consciousness  such  as  no  animal  can  be  credited 
with.  Nevertheless,  popular  opinion  is,  I think,  in  the 
right  in  attributing  to  the  animals  in  their  moments  of 
self-display  the  germ  of  the  emotion  that  is  the  most 
essential  constituent  of  pride.  It  is  this  primary 
emotion  which  may  be  called  positive  self-feeling  or 
elation,  and  which  might  well  be  called  pride,  if  that  word 
were  not  required  to  denote  the  sentiment  of  pride.  In 
the  simple  form,  in  which  it  is  expressed  by  the  self- 
display of  animals,  it  does  not  necessarily  imply  self- 
consciousness. 

Many  children  clearly  exhibit  this  instinct  of  self- 
display ; before  they  can  walk  or  talk  the  impulse  finds 
its  satisfaction  in  the  admiring  gaze  and  plaudits  of  the 
family  circle  as  each  new  acquirement  is  practised  ; ^ a 
little  later  it  is  still  more  clearly  expressed  by  the 
frequently  repeated  command,  ‘‘  See  me  do  this,”  or 
“See  how  well  I can  do  so-and-so”;  and  for  many  a 
child  more  than  half  the  delight  of  riding  on  a pony,  or 

* One  of  my  boys,  who  learnt  to  walk  when  eighteen  months 
old,  delighted  in  the  applause  that  greeted  his  first  steps,  and, 
every  time  that  one  of  his  many  excursions  across  the  room 
failed  to  evoke  it,  he  threw  himself  prone  upon  the  floor  with  loud 
cries  of  anger  and  displeasure. 


64 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


of  wearing  a new  coat,  consists  in  the  satisfaction  of  this 
instinct,  and  vanishes  if  there  be  no  spectators.  A little 
later,  with  the  growth  of  self-consciousness  the  instinct 
may  find  expression  in  the  boasting  and  swaggering  of 
boys,  the  vanity  of  girls ; while,  with  almost  all  of  us,  it 
becomes  the  most  important  constituent  of  the  self- 
regarding  sentiment  and  plays  an  all-important  part 
in  the  volitional  control  of  conduct,  in  the  way  to  be 
discussed  in  a later  chapter. 

The  situation  that  more  particularly  excites  this 
instinct  is  the  presence  of  spectators  to  whom  one  feels 
oneself  for  any  reason,  or  in  any  way,  supejrior,  and  this 
is  perhaps  true  in  a modified  sense  of  the  animals  ; the 
“dignified”  behaviour  of  a big  dog  in  the  presence  of 
small  ones,  the  stately  strutting  of  a hen  among  her 
chicks,  seem  to  be  instances  in  point.  We  have,  then, 
good  reason  to  believe  that  the  germ  of  this  emotion  is 
present  in  the  animal  world,  and,  if  we  make  use  of  our 
second  criterion  of  the  primary  character  of  an  emotion, 
it  answers  well  to  the  test.  For  in  certain  mental 
diseases,  especially  in  the  early  stages  of  that  most 
terrible  disorder,  general  paralysis  of  the  insane,  ex- 
aggeration  of  this  emotion  and  of  its  impulse  of  display 
is  the  leading  symptom.  The  unfortunate  patient  is 
perpetually  in  a state  of  elated  self-feeling,  and  his 
behaviour  corresponds  to  his  emotional  state  ; he  struts 
before  the  world,  boasts  of  his  strength,  his  immense 
wealth,  his  good  looks,  his  luck,  his  family,  when,  perhaps, 
there  is  not  the  least  foundation  for  his  boastings. 

As  regards  the  emotion  of  subjection  or  negative  self- 
feeling. we  have  the  same  grounds  for  regarding  it  as  a 
primary  emotion  that  accompanies  the  excitement  of  an 
instinctive  disposition.  The  impulse  of  this  instinct 
expresses  itself  in  a slinking,  crestfallen  behaviour,  a 
general  diminution  of  muscular  tone,  slow  restricted 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  65 


movements,  a hanging  down  of  the  head,  and  sidelong 
glances.  In  the  dog  the  picture  is  completed  by  the 
sinking  of  the  tail  between  the  legs.  All  these  features 
express  submissiveness,  and  are  calculated  to  avoid 
attracting  attention  or  to  mollify  the  spectator.  The 
nature  of  the  instinct  is  sometimes  very  completely 
expressed  in  the  behaviour  of  a young  dog  on  the 
approach  of  a larger,  older  dog ; he  crouches  or  crawls 
with  legs  so  bent  that  his  belly  scrapes  the  ground,  his 
back  hollowed,  his  tail  tucked  away,  his  head  sunk  and 
turned  a little  on  one  side,  and  so  approaches  the 
imposing  stranger  with  every  mark  of  submission. 

The  recognition  of  this  behaviour  as  the  expression 
of  a special  instinct  of  self-abasement  and  of  a corre- 
sponding primary  emotion  enables  us  to  escape  from  a 
much-discussed  difficulty.  It  has  been  asked,  ‘‘  Can 
animals  and  young  children  that  have  not  attained  to 
self-consciousness  feel  shame  ? And  the  answer  usually 
given  is,  “ No  ; shame  implies  self-consciousness.”  Yet 
some  animals,  notably  the  dog,  sometimes  behave  in  a 
way  which  the  popular  mind  interprets  as  expressing 
shame.  The  truth  seems  to  be  that,  while  fully- 
developed  shame,  shame  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word, 
does  imply  self-consciousness  and  a self-regarding 
sentiment,  yet  in  the  emotion  that  accompanies  this 
impulse  to  slink  submissively  we  may  see  the  rudiment 
of  shame  ;/and,  if  we  do  not  recognise  this  instinct,  it  is 
impossible  to  account  for  the  genesis  of  shame  or  of 
bashfulness. 

In  children  the  expression  of  this  emotion  is  often 
mistaken  for  that  of  fear ; but  the  young  child  sitting  on 
his  mother’s  lap  in  perfect  silence  and  with  face  averted, 
casting  sidelong  glances  at  a stranger,  presents  a picture 
very  different  from  that  of  fear. 

Applying,  again,  our  pathological  test,  we  find  that  it 


66 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


is  satisfied  by  this  instinct  of  self-abasement.  In  many 
cases  of  mental  disorder  the  exaggerated  influence  of 
this  instinct  seems  to  determine  the  leading  symptoms. 
The  patient  shrinks  from  the  observation  of  his  fellows, 
thinks  himself  a most  wretched,  useless,  sinful  creature, 
and,  in  many  cases,  he  develops  delusions  of  having 
performed  various  unworthy  or  even  criminal  actions ; 
many  such  patients  declare  they  are  guilty  of  the  un- 
pardonable sin,  although  they  attach  no  definite  meaning 
to  the  phrase — that  is  to  say,  the  patient’s  intellect 
endeavours  to  justify  the  persistent  emotional  state, 
which  has  no  adequate  cause  in  his  relations  to  his 
fellow-men. 

The  Parental  Instinct  and  the  Tender  E^notion 

As  regards  the  parental  instinct  and  tender  emotion, 
there  are  wide  differences  of  opinion.  Some  of  the 
authors  who  have  paid  most  attention  to  the  psy- 
chology of  the  emotions,  notably  Mr.  A.  F.  Shand,  do 
not  recognise  tender  emotion  as  primary ; ^ others, 
especially  Mr.  Alex.  Sutherland  ^ and  M.  Ribot,s 
recognise  it  as  a true  primary  and  see  in  its  impulse 
the  root  of  all  altruism ; Mr.  Sutherland,  however,  like 
Adam  Smith  and  many  other  writers,  has  confused 
tender  emotion  with  sympathy,  a serious  error  of  incom- 
plete analysis,  which  Ribot  has  avoided. 

The  maternal  instinct,  which  impels  the  mother  to 
protect  and  cherish  her  young,  is  common  to  almost 
all  the  higher  species  of  animals.  Among  the  lower 
animals  the  perpetuation  of  the  species  is  generally  pro- 
vided for  by  the  production  of  an  immense  number  of 

' See  his  chapter  on  the  emotions  in  Professor  Stout's  ‘‘Ground- 
work of  Psychology." 

* “Origin  and  Growth  of  the  Moral  Instinct/' 

3 Op.  ciU 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  67 


eggs  or  young  (in  some  species  of  fish  a single  adult 
produces  more  than  a million  eggs),  which  are  left 
entirely  unprotected,  and  are  so  preyed  upon  by  other 
creatures  that  on  the  average  but  one  or  two  attain 
maturity.  As  we  pass  higher  up  the  animal  scale,  we 
find  the  number  of  eggs  or  young  more  and  more 
reduced,  and  the  diminution  of  their  number  compen- 
sated for  by  parental  protection.  At  the  lowest  stage 
this  protection  may  consist  in  the  provision  of  some 
merely  physical  shelter,  as  in  the  case  of  those  animals 
that  carry  their  eggs  attached  in  some  way  to  their 
bodies.  But,  except  at  this  lowest  stage,  the  protection 
afforded  to  the  young  always  involves  some  instinctive 
adaptation  of  the  parent’s  behaviour.  We  may  see  this 
even  among  the  fishes,  some  of  which  deposit  their  eggs 
in  rude  nests  and  watch  over  them,  driving  away  crea- 
tures that  might  prey  upon  them.  From  this  stage 
onwards  protection  of  offspring  becomes  increasingly 
psychical  in  character,  involves  more  profound  modifica- 
tion of  the  parent’s  behaviour  and  a more  prolonged 
period  of  more  effective  guardianship.  The  highest 
stage  is  reached  by  those  species  in  which  each  female 
produces  at  a birth  but  one  or  two  young  and  protects 
them  so  efficiently  that  most  of  the  young  born  reach 
maturity  ;'4he  maintenance  of  the  species  thus  becomes 
in  the  main  the  work  of  the  parental  instinct.  In  such 
species  the  protection  and  cherishing  of  the  young  is 
the  constant  and  all-absorbing  occupation  of  the  mother, 
to  which  she  devotes  all  her  energies,  and  in  the  course 
of  which  she  will  at  any  time  undergo  privation,  pain, 
and  death.  The  instinct  becomes  more  powerful  than 
'^ny  other,  and  can  override  any  other,  even  fear  itself ; 
for  it  works  directly  in  the  service  of  the  species,  while 
the  other  instincts  work  primarily  in  the  service  of  the 
individual  life,  for  which  Nature  cares  little.  All  this 


68 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


has  been  well  set  out  by  Sutherland,  with  a wealth  of 
illustrative  detail,  in  his  work  on  “ The  Origin  and 
Growth  of  the  Moral  Instinct.” 

When  we  follow  up  the  evolution  of  this  instinct  to 
the  highest  animal  level,  we  find  among  the  apes  the 
most  remarkable  examples  of  its  operation.  Thus  in 
one  species  the  mother  is  said  to  carry  her  young  one 
clasped  in  one  arm  uninterruptedly  for  several  months, 
never  letting  go  of  it  in  all  her  wanderings.  This 
instinct  is  no  less  strong  in  many  human  mothers,  in 
whom,  of  course,  it  becomes  more  or  less  intellectualised 
and  organised  as  the  most  essential  constituent  of  the 
sentiment  of  parental  love.  Like  other  species,  the 
human  species  is  dependent  upon  this  instinct  for  its 
continued  existence  and  welfare.  It  is  true  that  reason, 
working  in  the  service  of  the  egoistic  impulses  and 
sentiments,  often  circumvents  the  ends  of  this  instinct 
and  sets  up  habits  which  are  incompatible  with  it. 
When  that  occurs  on  a large  scale  in  any  society,  that 
society  is  doomed  to  rapid  decay.  But  the  instinct 
itself  can  never  die  out,  save  with  the  disappearance  of 
the  human  species  itself ; it  is  kept  strong  and  effective 
just  because  those  families  and  races  and  nations  in 
which  it  weakens  become  rapidly  supplanted  by  those 
in  which  it  is  strong. 

It  is  impossible  to  believe  that  the  operation  of  this, 
the  most  powerful  of  the  instincts,  is  not  accompanied 
by  a strong  and  definite  emotion ; one  may  see  the 
emotion  expressed  unmistakably  by  almost  any  mother 
among  the  higher  animals,  especially  the  birds  and  the 
mammals — by  the  cat,  for  example,  and  by  most  of 
the  domestic  animals  ; and  it  is  impossible  to  doubt 
that  this  emotion  has  in  all  cases  the  peculiar  quality  of 
the  tender  emotion  provoked  in  the  human  parent 
by  the  spectacle  of  her  helpless  offspring.  This  primary 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  69 


emotion  has  been  very  generally  ignored  by  the  philo-  \ 
sophers  and  psychologists ; that  is,  perhaps,  to  be  | 
explained  by  the  fact  that  this  instinct  and  its  emotion 
are  in  the  main  decidedly  weaker  in  men  than  in  I 
women,  and  in  some  men,  perhaps,  altogether  lacking. 
We  may  even  surmise  that  the  philosophers  as  a class 
are  men  among  whom  this  defect  of  native  endowment  ’ 
is  relatively  common. 

It  may  be  asked.  How  can  we  account  for  the  fact 
that  men  are  at  all  capable  of  this  emotion  and  of  this 
disinterested  protective  impulse?  For  in  its  racial 
origin  the  instinct  was  undoubtedly  primarily  maternal. 
The  answer  is  that  it  is  very  common  to  see  a character, 
acquired  by  one  sex  to  meet  its  special  needs,  trans- 
mitted, generally  imperfectly  and  with  large  individual 
variations,  to  the  members  of  the  other  sex.  Familiar 
examples  of  such  transmission  of  sexual  characters  are 
afforded  by  the  horns  and  antlers  of  some  species  of 
sheep  and  deer.  That  the  parental  instinct  is  by  no 
means  altogether  lacking  in  men  is  probably  due  in  the 
main  to  such  transference  of  a primarily  maternal  instincL^ 
though  it  is  probable  that  in  the  human  species  natural 
selection  has  confirmed  and  increased  its  inheritance  by 
the  male  sex. 

^ To  this  view,  that  the  parental  tenderness  of  human 
beings  depends  upon  an  instinct  phylogenetically  con- 
tinuous with  the  parental  instinct  of  the  higher  animals, 
it  might  be  objected  that  the  very  widespread  preva- 
lence of  infanticide  among  existing  savages  implies 
that  primitive  man  lacked  this  instinct  and  its  tender 
emotion.  But  that  would  be  a most  mistaken  objection. 
There  is  no  feature  of  savage  life  more  nearly  universal 
than  the  kindness  and  tenderness  of  savages,  even  of 
savage  fathers,  for  their  little  children.  All  observers  are 
agreed  upon  this  point.  I have  many  a time  watched 


70 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


I with  interest  a bloodthirsty  head-hunter  of  Borneo 
j spending  a day  at  home  tenderly  nursing  his  infant  in 
his  arms.  And  it  is  a rule,  to  which  there  are  few 
exceptions  among  savage  peoples,  that  an  infant  is  only 
killed  during  the  first  hours  of  its  life.  If  the  child  is 
allowed  to  survive  but  a few  days,  then  its  life  is  safe ; 
the  tender  emotion  has  been  called  out  in  fuller  strength 
and  has  begun  to  be  organised  into  a sentiment  of 
parental  love  that  is  too  strong  to  be  overcome  by 
prudential  or  purely  selfish  considerations.^ 

The  view  of  the  origin  of  parental  tenderness  here 
adopted  compares,  I think,  very  favourably  with  other 
accounts  of  its  genesis.  Bain  taught  that  it  is  generated 
in  the  individual  by  the  frequent  repetition  of  the 
intense  pleasure  of  contact  with  the  young ; though  why 
this  contact  should  be  so  highly  pleasurable  he  did  not 
explain.2  Others  have  attributed  it  to  the  expectation 
by  the  parent  of  filial  care  in  his  or  her  old  age.  This 
is  one  form  of  the  absurd  and  constantly  renewed 
attempt  to  reveal  all  altruism  as  arising  essentially  out 
of  a more  or  less  subtle  regard  for  one’s  own  welfare  or 
pleasure.  If  tender  emotion  and  the  sentiment  of  love 
really  arose  from  a disguised  selfishness  of  this  sort,  how 
much  stronger  should  be  the  love  of  the  child  for  the 
parent  than  that  of  the  parent  for  the  child!  For  the 
child  is  for  many  years  utterly  dependent  on  the  parent 
for  his  every  pleasure  and  the  satisfaction  of  his  every 
need ; whereas  the  mother’s  part — if  she  were  not 
endowed  with  this  powerful  instinct — would  be  one 
long  succession  of  sacrifices  and  painful  efforts  on 
behalf  of  her  child.  Parental  love  must  always  appear 
an  insoluble  riddle  and  paradox  if  we  do  not  recognise 

* C/.  Chap.  XVII.  of  E.  Westermarck’s  ''Origin  and  Develop- 
ment of  the  Moral  Ideas.* **  London,  1906. 

» " Emotions  and  the  Will,**  p.  82. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  71 


this  primary  emotion,  deeply  rooted  in  an  ancient 
instinct  of  vital  importance  to  the  race.  Long  ago  the 
Roman  moralists  were  perplexed  by  it  They  noticed 
that  in  the  Sullan  prosecutions,  while  many  sons 
denounced  their  fathers,  no  father  was  ever  known  to 
denounce  his  son  ; and  they  recognised  that  this  fact 
was  inexplicable  by  their  theories  of  conduct  For 
their  doctrine  was  like  that  of  Bain,  who  said  explicitly: 
“ Tender  feeling  is  as  purely  self-seeking  as  any  other 


, and  makes  no  inquiry  as  to  the  feelings  of  the 


but  does  not  necessarily  cause  us  to  seek  the  good 
of  the  object  farther  than  is  needful  to  gratify  our- 
selves in  the  indulgence  of  the  feeling.^^  And  again,  in 
express  reference  to  m^aternal  tenderness,  he  wrote  : 

“ The  superficial  observer  has  to  be  told  that  the  feeling 
in  itself  is  as  purely  self-regarding  as  the  pleasure  of 
wine  or  of  music.  Under  it  we  are  induced  to  seek  the 
presence  of  the  beloved  objects  and  to  make  the 
requisite  sacrifices  to  gain  the  end,  looking  all  the 
while  at  our  own  pleasure  and  to  nothing  beyond.”  ^ 
This  doctrine  is  a gross  libel  on  human  nature,  which  is 
not  so  far  inferior  to  animal  nature  in  this  respect  as 
Bain's  words  imply.  If  Bain,  and  those  who  agree 
with  his  doctrine,  were  in  the  right,  everything  the 
cynics  have  said  of  human  nature  would  be  justified ; 
for  from  this  emotion  and  its  impulse  to  cherish  and  f 
protect  spring  generosity,  gratitude,  love,  pity,  true  ] 
benevolence,  and  altruistic  conduct  of  every  kind  ; in  it  | 
they  have  their  main  and  absolutely  essential  root,  * 
without  which  they  would  not  be.^ 

* 0^.  ciL,  p.  80. 

» Tnere  are  women,  happily  few,  whose  attitude  towards  their 
children  shows  them  to  be  devoid  of  the  maternal  instinct. 
Reflection  upon  the  conduct  of  such  a woman  will  discover  that 
her  conduct  in  all  relations  proceeds  from  purely  selfish  motives. 


personality.  It  is  by  nature  pleasurable. 


72 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


Like  the  other  primary  emotions,  the  tender  emotion 
cannot  be  described  ; a person  who  had  not  experienced 
it  could  no  more  be  made  to  understand  its  quality  than 
a totally  colour-blind  person  can  be  made  to  understand 
the  experience  of  colour-sensation.  Its  impulse  is 
primarily  to  afford  physical  protection  to  the  child, 
especially  by  throwing  the  arms  about  it ; and  that 
fundamental  impulse  persists  in  spite  of  the  immense 
extension  of  the  range  of  application  of  the  impulse  and 
its  incorporation  in  many  ideal  sentiments.'' 

Like  all  the  other  instinctive  impulses,  this  one,  when 
its  operation  meets  with  obstruction  or  opposition,  gives 
place  to,  or  is  complicated  by,  the  pugnacious  or  com- 
bative impulse  directed  against  the  source  of  the 
obstruction  ;/and,  the  impulse  being  essentially  pro- 
I tective,  its  obstruction  provokes  anger  perhaps  more 
•readily  than  the  obstruction  of  any  other.  In  almost 
all  animals  that  display  it,  even  in  those  which  in  all 
other  situations  are  very  timid,  any  attempt  to  remove 
the  young  from  the  protecting  parent,  or  in  any  way  to 
hurt  them,  provokes  a fierce  and  desperate  display  of  all 
their  combative  resources.  By  the  human  mother  the 
same  prompt  yielding  of  the  one  impulse  to  the  other  is 
displayed  on  the  same  plane  of  physical  protection,  but 
also  on  the  higher  plane  of  ideal  protection ; the  least 
threat,  the  smallest  slight  or  aspersion  (e.g.,  the  mere 
speaking  of  the  baby  as  " it,”  instead  of  as  “ he  ” or 
“she”),  the  mere  suggestion  that  it  is  not  the  most 
beautiful  object  in  the  world,  will  suffice  to  provoke 
a quick  resentment. 

^his  intimate  alliance  between  tender  emotion  and 

• It  is,  I think,  not  improbable  that  the  impulse  to  kiss  the 
child,  which  is  certainly  strong  and  seems  to  be  innate,  is  a 
modification  of  the  maternal  impulse  to  lick  the  young  which  is 
a feature  of  the  maternal  instinct  of  so  many  animal  species. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  73 


anger  is  of  great  importance  for  the  social  life  of  man, 
and  the  right  understanding  of  it  is  fundamental  for  a 
true  theory  of  the  moral  sentiments ; for  the  anger 
evoked  in  this  way  is  the  germ  of  all  moral  indignation, 
and  on  moral  indignation  justice  and  the  greater  part  of 
public  law  are  in  the  main  founded.  Thus,  paradoxical 
as  it  may  seem,  beneficence  and  punishment  alike  have 
their  firmest  and  most  essential  root  in  the  parental 
Jnstinct.  For  the  understanding  of  the  relation  of  this 
instinct  to  moral  indignation,  it  is  important  to  note 
that  the  object  which  is  the  primary  provocative  of 
j tender  emotion  is,  not  the  child  itself,  but  the  child’s 
expression  of  pain,  fear,  or  distress  of  any  kind,  especi- 
■ ally  the  child’s  cry  of  distress  ; further,  that  this  in- 
stinctive response  is  provoked  by  the  cry,  not  only  of 
pne’s  own  offspring,  but  of  any  child.  Tender  emotion 
and  the  protective  impulse  are,  no  doubt,  evoked  more 
readily  and  intensely  by  one’s  own  offspring,  because 
about  them  a strongly  organised  and  complex  senti- 
ment grows  up.  But  the  distress  of  any  child  will 
evoke  this  response  in  a very  intense  degree  in  those  in 
whom  the  instinct  is  strong.  There  are  women — and 
men  also,  though  fewer — who  cannot  sit  still,  or  pursue 
any  occupation,  within  sound  of  the  distressed  cry  of  a 
child  ; if  circumstances  compel  them  to  restrain  their 
impulse  to  run  to  its  relief,  they  yet  cannot  withdraw 
their  attention  from  the  sound,  but  continue  to  listen  in 
painful  agitation. 

In  the  human  being,  just  as  is  the  case  in  some  degree 
with  all  the  instinctive  responses,  and  as  we  noticed 
especially  in  the  case  of  disgust,  there  takes  place  a vast 
extension  of  the  field  of  application  of  the  maternal 
instinct.  The  similarity  of  various  objects  to  the 
primary  or  natively  given  object,  similarities  which  in 
many  cases  can  only  be  operative  for  a highly  developed 


74 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


mind,  enables  them  to  evoke  tender  emotion  and  its 
protective  impulse  directly — i.e.,  not  merely  by  way  of 
associative  reproduction  of  the  natively  given  object. 
/ In  this  way  the  emotion  is  liable  to  be  evoked,  not  only 
by  the  distress  of  a child,  , but  by  the  mere  sight  or 
I thought  of  a perfectly  happy  child  ; dor  its  feebleness, 
j its  delicacy,  its  obvious  incapacity  to  supply  its  own 
needs,  its  liability  to  a thousand  different  ills,  suggest  to 
>the  mind  its  neediJf  piotection.  /fey  a further  extension 
of  the  same  kind  the  emotion  may  be  evoked  by  the 
sight  of  any  very  young  animal,  especially  if  in  distress; 
Wordsworth’s  poem  on  the  pet  lamb  is  the  celebration  of 
this  emotion  in  its  purest  form  ; and  indeed  it  would  be 
easy  to  wax  enthusiastic  in  the  cause  of  an  instinct 
that  is  the  source  of  the  only  entirely  admirable,  satis- 
fying, and  perfect  human  relationship,  as  well  as  of 
every  kind  of  purely  disinterested  conduct. 

I '^In  a similar  direct  fashion  the  distress  of  any  aault 
[(towards  whom  we  harbour  no  hostile  sentiment)  evokes 
the  emotion ; but  in  this  case  it  is  more  apt  to  be 
complicated  by  sympathetic  pain,  when  it  becomes  the 
painful,  tender  emotion  we  call  pity  ; whereas  the  child, 
or  any  other  helpless  and  delicate  thing,  may  call  it  out 
in  the  pure  form  without  alloy  of  sympathetic  pain,  /it 
is  amusing  to  observe  how,  in  those  women  in  whom 
the  instinct  is  strong,  it  is  apt  to  be  excited,  owing  to 
the  subtle  working  of  similarity,  by  any  and  every 
object  that  is  small  and  delicate  of  its  kind — a very 
small  cup,  or  chair,  or  book,  or  what  not. 

/Extension  takes  place  also  through  association  in 
virtue  of  coQtiguity ; the  objects  intimately  connected 
with  the  prime  object  of  the  emotion — such  objects  as 
the  clothes,  the  toys,  the  bed,  of  the  beloved  child — 
become  capable  of  exciting  the  emotion  directly. 

But  the  former  mode  of  direct  extension  of  the  field 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  75 


of  application  is  in  this  case  the  more  important.  It  is 
in  virtue  of  such  extension  to  similars  that,  when  we 
see,  or  hear  of,  the  ill-treatment  of  any  weak,  defence- 
less creature  (especially,  of  course,  if  the  creature  be  a 
child)  tender  emotion  and  the  protective  impulse  are 
aroused  on  its  behalf,  but  are  apt  to  give  place  at  once 
to  the  anger  we  call  moral  indignation  against  the 
perpetrator  of  the  cruelty;  and  in  bad  cases  we  are 
quite  prepared  to  tear  the  offender  limb  from  limb,  the 
tardy  process  of  the  law  with  its  mild  punishments 
seeming  utterly  inadequate  to  afford  vicarious  satis- 
faction to  our  anger.i 

How  is  this  great  fact  of  wholly  disinterested 
anger  or  indignation  to  be  accounted  for,  if  not 
in  the  way  here  suggested  ? The  question  is  an  im- 
jportant  one  ; it  supplies  a touchstone  for  all  theories  of 
the  moral  emotions  and  sentiments.  For,  as  was  said 
[above,  this  disinterested  indignation  is  the  ultimate  root 
' of  justice  and  of  public  law ; without  its  support  law 
I and  its  machinery  would  be  most  inadequate  safeguards 
of  personal  rights  and  liberties  ; and,  in  opposition  to 
the  moral  indignation  of  a majority  of  members  of  any 
! society,  laws  can  only  be  very  imperfectly  enforced  by 
the  strongest  despotism,  as  we  see  in  Russia  at  the 
present  time.  Those  who  deny  any  truly  altruistic 

* It  is  a fair  question  whether,  among  those  nations  who  pride 
themselves  upon  having  attained  so  high  a state  of  civilisation 
that  they  can  no  longer  inflict  capital  punishment,  the  greater 
clemency  of  the  law  should  not  be  attributed  to  a relative 
deficiency  in  the  strength  of  the  parental  instinct  in  the  mass 
of  the  people,  and  to  a consequent  relative  incapacity  for  moral 
indignation.  At  the  present  moment  the  moral  indignation  of  a 
large  section  of  the  French  people  is  clamouring  for  the  death 
of  a wretch  who  has  been  convicted  of  cruelly  maltreating  a 
child  and  to  whom,  it  is  thought,  the  presidential  clemency  may 
be  extended. 


;6 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


motive  to  man  and  seek  to  reduce  apparent  altruism 
to  subtle  and  far-sighted  egoism,  must  simply  deny  the 
obvious  facts,  and  must  seek  some  far-fetched  unreal 
explanations  of  such  phenomena  as  the  anti-slavery  and 
Congo-reform  movements,  the  anti-vivis'ection  crusade, 
and  the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children. 
Let  us  examine  briefly  the  way  in  which  Bain  sought  to 
account  for  ostensibly  disinterested  emotion  and  action. 
As  we  have,  seen  above,  he  regarded  tender  emotion  as 
wholly  self-seeking,  and,  like  many  other  authors,  he 
attributed  such  actions  as  we  are  considering  to  sym- 
pathy. He  wrote : “ From  a region  of  the  mind  quite 
apart  from  the  tender  emotion  arises  the  principle  of 
sympathy,  or  the  prompting  to  take  on  the  pleasures 
and  pains  of  other  beings,  and  act  on  them  as  if  they 
were  our  own.  Instead  of  being  a source  of  pleasure  to 
us,  the  primary  operation  of  sympathy  is  to  make  us 
surrender  pleasures  and  to  incur  pains.  This  is  a 
paradox  of  our  constitution  to  be  again  more  fully 
considered.”  * 

Here  he  has  clearly  committed  himself  to  a position 
that  needs  much  explanation.  But,  when  we  seek  his 
fuller  consideration  of  this  paradox,  all  we  find  is  a 
passage  of  a few  lines  in  his  section  on  moral  dis- 
approbation. This  passage  tells  us  that,  when  another’s 
conduct  inspires  a feeling  of  disapprobation  as  violating 
the  maxims  recognised  to  be  binding,  “ It  is  to  be 
supposed  that  the  same  sense  of  duty  that  operates 
upon  one’s  own  self,  and  stings  with  remorse  and  fear 
in  case  of  disobedience,  should  come  into  play  when 
some  other  person  is  the  guilty  agent.  The  feeling 
that  rises  up  towards  that  person  is  a strong  feeling  of 
displeasure  or  dislike,  proportioned  to  the  strength 
of  our  regard  to  the  violated  duty.  There  arises  a 
• Op.  at.,  p.  83. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  77 


moral  resentment,  or  a disposition  to  inflict  punishment 
upon  the  offender/’  ^ That  is  to  say,  accordinf|  to  Bain, 
the  source  of  all  disinterested  moral  indignation  is  the 
reflection,  “ If  I had  done  that,  I should  have  been 
punished ; therefore  he  must  be  punished.”  Now,  this 
attitude  is  not  uncommon,  especially  in  the  nursery, 
and  it  plays  some  small  part,  no  doubt,  in  securing 
equal  distribution  of  punishments ; but  it  is  surely 
wholly  inadequate  to  account  for  that  paradox  of  our 
constitution  previously  recognised  by  Bain.  ^In  order 
to  realise  how  far  from  the  truth  this  doctrine  is,  we 
have  only  to  consider  what  kinds  of  conduct  provoke 
our  moral  indignation  most  strongly.  If  we  hear  of  a 
4man  robbing  a bank,  holding  up  a mail  train,  or  killing 
another  in  fair  fight,  we  may  agree  that  he  should  be 
punished ; for  we  recognise  intellectually  that  the 
interests  of  society  demand  that  such  things  shall  not 
be  done  too  frequently,  and  we  ourselves  might  shrink 
from  similar  conduct ; but  our  feeling  towards  the 
criminal  may  be  one  of  pity,  or  perhaps  merely  one  of 
amusement  dashed  with  admiration  for  his  audacity  and 
skill.  But  let  the  act  be  one  inflicting  pain  on  a help- 
less creature — an  act  of  cruelty  to  a horse,  a dog,  or, 
above  all,  to  a child — and  our  moral  indignation  blazes 
out,  even  though  the  act  be  one  for  which  the  law 
prescribes  no  punishment.  Bain’s  explanation  of  his 
“ paradox  ” of  sympathy  is  then  utterly  inadequate,  and 
a closer  examination  of  his  statement  of  the  principle 
of  sympathy  shows  that  it  is  false,  and  that  any  plausi- 
bility it  may  seem  to  possess  depends  upon  the  vague 
and  rhetorical  language  in  which  it  is  made.  His  state- 
ment is  that  sympathy  is  the  prompting  to  take  on  the 
pains  and  pleasures  of  another  being,  and  to  endeavour 
to  abolish  that  other’s  pain  and  to  prolong  his  pleasure. 
* op.  ciLf  p.  291. 


78 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


I But,  if  we  use  more  accurate  language,  we  shall  have  to 
say  that  the  sympathetic  pain  or  pleasure  we  experience 
j is  immediately  evoked  in  us  by  the  spectacle  of  pain  or 
of  pleasure,  and  that  we  then  act  on  it  because  it  is  our 
I own  pain  or  pleasure ; and  the  action  we  take  (so  long 
, as  no  other  principle  is  at  work)  is  directed  to  cut  short 
I our  own  pain  and  to  prolong  our  own  pleasure,  quite 
regardless  of  the  feelings  of  the  other  person.  Now, 
the  easiest  and  quickest  way  of  cutting  short  sym- 
pathetically induced  pain  is  to  turn  our  eyes  and  our 
thoughts  away  from  the  suffering  creature ; and  this  is 
the  way  invariably  followed  by  all  sensitive  natures  in 
which  the  tender  emotion  and  its  protective  impulse  are 
weak.  They  pass  by  the  sick  and  suffering  with 
j averted  gaze,  and  resolutely  banish  all  thoughts  of 
; them,  surrounding  themselves  as  far  as  possible  with 
gay  and  cheerful  faces.  No  doubt  the  spectacle  of 
the  poor  man  who  fell  among  thieves  was  just  as 
distressing  to  the  priest  and  the  Levite,  who  passed 
by  on  the  other  side,  as  to  the  good  Samaritan  who 
tenderly  cared  for  him.  They  may  well  have  been 
exquisitely  sensitive  souls,  who  would  have  fainted 
away  if  they  had  been  compelled  to  gaze  upon 
his  wounds.  The  great  difference  between  them  and 
the  Samaritan  was  that  in  him  the  tender  emotion 
and  its  impulse  were  evoked,  and  that  this  impulse 
overcame,  or  prevented,  the  aversion  naturally  induced 
by  the  painful  and,  perhaps,  disgusting  spectacle.^ 

J Our  susceptibility  to  sympathetically  induced  pain  or 
/pleasure,  operating  alone,  simply  inclines  us,  then,  to 
/avoid  the  neighbourhood  of  the  distressed  and  to  seek 
the  company  of  the  cheerful ; but  tender  emotion  draws 
( us  near  to  the  suffering  and  the  sad,  seeking  to  alleviate 
their  distress.  It  is  to  be  noted  also  that  the  intensity 
* For  fuller  discussion  of  sympathy  see  Chapters  IV.  and  VI. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  79 


jof  the  emotion  and  the  strength  of  its  impulse  to 
’cherish  and  protect,  and  also  the  violence  of  the 
anger  we  feel  against  him  who  inflicts  pain  on  any 
!weak  and  defenceless  creature — all  these  bear  no  con- 
stant relation  to  the  intensity  of  our  sympathetically 
induced  pain.  There  are  natures  so  strong  and  so 
I happily  constituted  that  they  hardly  know  pain  ; yet 
they  may  be  very  tender-hearted  and  easily  roused  to 
1 anger  by  the  spectacle  of  cruelty.  Again,  the  mere 
threat  of  injury  to  a feeble  creature  may  provoke  an 
instantaneous  anger;  and  it  would  be  absurd  to  suppose 
I that  in  such  a case  one  first  pictures  the  suffering  of  the 
creature  that  would  result  if  the  threat  were  executed, 
then  sympathetically  experiences  the  pain,  and  then, 
1 putting  oneself  in  the  place  of  the  prospectively  injured, 
goes  on  to  feel  anger  against  him  who  threatens.  The 
i response  is  as  direct,  and  as  the  mother's 

emotion  at  the  cry  of  her  child  or  her  impulse  to  fly  to 
its  defence  ; and  it  is  essentially  the  same  process. 

Xfn  no  other  way  than  that  here  proposed  is  it  possible 
to  account  for  disinterested  beneficence  and  moral  in- 
dignation. If  this  view  is  rejected,  they  remain  a 
paradox  and  a miracle — tendencies,  mysteriously 
implanted  in  the  human  breast,  that  have  no  history 
in  the  evolutionary  process,  no  analogy  and  no  intelli- 
gible connection  with,  no  resemblance  to,  any  of  the 
other  features  of  our  mental  constitution. 

The  importance  of  establishing  the  place  of  tender 
emotion  among  the  primary  emotions  necessitates  in 
this  place  a bj-^  c^kism^f 

it,  although  this  criticism  may  be  more  easily  under- 
stood after  reading  Chapters  V.  and  VI.,  in  which  the 
organisation  of  the  sentiments  is  discussed. 

According  to  Mr.  Shand,i  tender  emotion  is  always 

‘ Professor  Stout's  **  Groundwork  of  Psychology/'  chap.  xvi. 


8o 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


complex*  and  into  its  composition  there  enter  always 
both  joy  and  sorrow.  He  arrives  at  this  view  in  the 
following  way  : Accepting  the  traditional  view  that  joy 
and  sorrow  are  primary  emotions,  he  says  that  joy  is  a 
diffusive  emotion  that  has  no  specific  tendency  (for  he 
has  not  accepted  the  guiding  principle  followed  in  these 
pages,  namely,  that  each  primary  emotion  accompanies 
the  excitement  of  an  instinctive  disposition  of  specific 
tendency) ; and  sorrow,  he  says,  has  two  impulses, 
namely,  to  cling  to  its  object  and  to  restore  it,  to  repair 
the  injury  done  to  it  that  is  the  cause  of  the  sorrow. 
He  then  takes  pity  as  the  simplest  type  of  tender 
emotion,  and  finds  that  it  has  the  fundamental  impulses 
of  sorrow,  to  restore  and  to  cling  to  its  object ; but  pity 
is  not  pure  sorrow,  because  it  has  an  element  of  sweet- 
ness ; which  element  he  identifies  with  joy.  Hence 
pity,  the  simplest  variety  of  tender  emotion,  is,  he  says, 
a fusion  of  joy  and  sorrow. 

Mr.  Shand  does  not  attempt  to  account  for  sorrow,  or 
to  trace  its  history  in  the  race,  or  to  show  how  it  gets 
its  disinterested  impulse  to  restore  and  do  good  to  its 
object.  And  this  is  the  all-important  question,  for  this 
impulse  of  tender  emotion  is,  as  has  been  said,  the 
source  of  all  altruistic  conduct  He  simply  begs  the 
question  in  assuming  sorrow  to  be  a primary  emotion 
having  this  impulse.  Further,  in  the  course  of  his  dis- 
cussion Shand  recognises  the  existence  of  a kind  of 
sorrow  or  grief  that  has  no  impulse  to  restore  its  object — 
the  hard,  bitter  variety  of  grief ; and  in  doing  that  he 
implicitly  admits  that  sorrow  is  complex  and  derived 
from  simpler  elements.  He  makes  also  this  significant 
admission : ‘‘  The  tenderness  of  pity  seems  to  come 
from  the  ideas  and  impulses  that  go  out  to  relieve 
suffering.’’  Now,  that  is  just  the  point  I wish  to  insist 
upon — that  there  is  in  pity  as  one  element  this  impulse 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  8i 


to  cherish  and  protect,  with  its  accompanying  tender 
emotion ; and  that  this  is  present  also  in  sorrow  proper, 
but  that  it  is  not  in  itself  painful — as  sorrow  is — and 
therefore  is  not  sorrow,  but  is  one  of  the  primary 
elements  of  which  sorrowful  emotion  is  compounded. 

/According  to  the  view  here  adopted,  the  element  of 
pain  in  pity  is  sympathetically  induced  pain,i  and  the 
element  of  sweetness  is  the  pleasure  that  attends  the 
satisfaction  of  the  impulse  of  the  tender  emotion.  That 
this  view  is  truer  than  the  other  is,  I think,  shown  by 
the  fact  that  pity  may  be  wholly  devoid  of  this  element 
of  sweetness  without  losing  its  essential  character — 
namely,  in  the  case  of  pity  evoked  by  some  terrible 
suffering  that  we  are  powerless  to  relieve ; in  this  case 
the  pain  of  the  obstructed  tender  impulse  is  added  to 
the  sympathetic  pain,  and  our  pity  is  wholly  painful. 

Another  good  reason  for  refusing  to  regard  sorrow  as 
one  of  the  primary  emotions  is  the  fact  that  sorrowful 
emotion  of  every  kind  presupposes  the  existence  of  an 
organised  sentiment,  and  is.  in  fact,  the  tender  emotion 
developed  _within  the  sentiment  of  love  and  rendered 
painful  either  by  sympathetically  induced  pmn — as  in 
the  case  of  injury  to  the  beloved  object,  or_by_the 
baffling  of_its  impulse — as  in  the  case  of  the  loss  of 
that  object.  If,  as  seems  to  me  indisputable,  sorrow 
presupposes  the  organised  sentiment  of  love,  it  clearly 
cannot  be  regarded  as  a primary  emotion. 

Some  other  Instincts  of  less  well-defined  Emotional 
Tendeficy 

The  seven  instincts  we  have  now  reviewed  are 
those  whose  excitement  yields  the  most  definite  of 
the  primary  emotions ; from  these  seven  primary 
emotions  together  with  feelings  of  pleasure  and  pain 
* See  Chapter  IV. 


82 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


(and  perhaps  also  feelings  of  excitement  and  of 
depression)  are  compounded  all,  or  almost  all,  the 
affective  states  that  are  popularly  recognised  as  emo- 
tions, and  for  which  common  speech  has  definite  names. 
\But  there  are  other  human  instincts  which,  though  some 
Aof  them  play  but  a minor  part  in  the  genesis  of  the 
/emotions,  have  impulses  that  are  of  great  importance 
( for  social  life ; they  must  therefore  be  mentioned. 

Of  these  by  far  the  most  important  is  the  sexual 
I,  -instinct  or  instinct  of  reproduction.  It  is  unnecessary  to 
say  anything  of  the  great  strength  of  its  impulse  or  of 
the  violence  of  the  emotional  excitement  that  accom- 
panies its  exercise.  One  point  of  interest  is  its  intimate 
connection  with  the  parental  instinct.  There  can,  I 
think,  be  little  doubt  that  this  connection  is  an  innate 
one,  and  that  in  all  (save  debased)  natures  it  secures 
that  the  object  of  the  sexual  impulse  shall  become 
also  the  object  in  some  degree  of  tender  emotion.^  The 
biological  utility  of  an  innate  connection  of  this  kind 
is  obvious.  It  would  prepare  the  way  for  that  co-opera- 
tion between  the  male  and  female  in  which,  even 
among  the  animals,  a lifelong  fidelity  and  mutual 
tenderness  is  often  touchingly  displayed. 

This  instinct,  more  than  any  other,  is  apt  in  mankind 
to  lend  the  immense  energy  of  its  impulse  to  the  senti- 
ments and  complex  impulses  into  which  it  enters,  while 
its  specific  character  remains  submerged  and  uncon- 
scious. It  is  unnecessary  to  dwell  on  this  feature,  since 
it  has  been  dealt  with  exhaustively  in  many  thousands 
of  novels .2  From  the  point  of  view  of  this  section  the 
chief  importance  of  this  instinct  is  that  it  illustrates,  in 

* In  so  far,  of  course,  as  the  impulse  is  not  completely  thwarted. 

= For  an  admirable  and  detailed  exposition  of  the  role  of  this 
instinct  in  human  life  see  the  great  work  of  Prof.  Aug.  Forel, 
‘'Die  Sexuelle  Frage.”  Munich.  1907. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  83 


a manner  that  must  convince  the  most  obtuse,  the 
continuity  and  the  essential  similarity  of  nature  and 
function  between  the  human  and  the  animal  instincts. 
In  connection  with  the  instinct  of  reproduction  a 
few  words  must  be  said  about  sexual  jealousy  and  female 
coyness.  These  are  regarded  by  some  authors  as  special 
instincts,  but  perhaps  without  sufficiently  good  grounds. 
Jealousy  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word  is  a complex 
emotion  that  presupposes  an  organised  sentiment,  and 
there  is  no  reason  to  regard  the  hostile  behaviour  of 
the  male  animal  in  the  presence  of  rivals  as  necessarily 
implying  any  such  complex  emotion  or  sentiment.  The 
assumption  of  a specially  intimate  innate  connection 

0)  befatvegfl  tbfi.jQ,stincts.'  of  reproduction  and  of  pugnacity 
will  account  for  the  fact  that  the  anger  of  the  male, 
both  in  the  human  and  in  most  animal  species,  is  so 
readily  aroused  in  an  intense  degree  by  any  threat 
of  opposition  to  the  operation  of  the  sexual  impulse ; 
and  perhaps  the  great  strength  of  the  sexual  impulse 
sufficiently  accounts  for  it. 

The  coyness  of  the  female  in  the  presence  of  the  male 
may  be  accounted  for  in  similar  fashion  by  the  assump- 
tion that  in  the  female  the  ingtinct  of  reproduction 
has-specially  intimate, innate  ^relations  to  the  instincts 
oL  self-display  and  self-abasement,  so  that  the  presence 
of  the  male  excites  these  as  well  as  the  former  instinct. 

_ The  desire  for  food  that  we  experience  when  hungry, 
with  the  impulse  to  seize  it,  to  carry  it  to  the  mouth, 
to  chew  it  and  swallow  it,  must,  I think,  be  regarded 
as  rooted  in  a true  instinct.  In  many  of  the  animals 
the  movements  of  feeding  exhibit  all  the  marks  of 
truly  instinctive  behaviour.  But  in  ourselves  the  in- 
stinct becomes  at  an  early  age  so  greatly  modified 
through  experience,  on  both  its  receptive  and  its  execu- 
tive sides,  that  little,  save  the  strong  impulse,  remains  to 


84 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


mark  the  instinctive  nature  of  the  process  of  feeding. 

3 The  gregarious  instinct  is  one  of  the  human  instincts 
of  greatest  social  importance,  for  it  has  played  a great 
part  in  moulding  societary  forms.  The  affective  aspect 
of  the  operation  of  this  instinct  is  not  sufficiently 
intense  or  specific  to  have  been  given  a name.  The 
instinct  is  displayed  by  many  species  of  animals,  even 
by  some  very  low  in  the  scale  of  mental  capacity.  /its 
operation  in  its  simplest  form  implies  none  of  the 
higher  qualities  of  mind,  neither  sympathy  nor  capacity 
for  mutual  aid.  Mr.  Francis  Galton  has  given  the 
classical  description  of  the  operation  of  the  crude 
instinct.  Describing  the  South  African  ox  in  Damara- 
landji  he  says  he  displays  no  affection  for  his  fellows, 
and  hardly  seems  to  notice  their  existence,  so  long 
as  he  is  among  them  ; but,  if  he  becomes  separated  from 
the  herd,  he  displays  an  extreme  distress  that  will 
not  let  him  rest  until  he  succeeds  in  rejoining  it,  when 
he  hastens  to  bury  himself  in  the  midst  of  it,  seeking  the 
closest  possible  contact  with  the  bodies  of  his  fellows. 
There  we  see  the  working  of  the  gregarious  instinct  in 
all  its  simplicity,  a mere  uneasiness  in  isolation  and 
satisfaction  in  being  one  of  a herd.  Its  utility  to 
animals  liable  to  the  attacks  of  beasts  of  prey  is  obvious. 

The  instinct  is  commonly  strongly  confirmed  by 
habit ; the  individual  is  born  into  a society  of  some  sort 
and  grows  up  in  it,  and  the  being  with  others  and  doing 
as  they  do  becomes  a habit  deeply  rooted  in  the  instinct. 
It  would  seem  to  be  a general  rule,  the  explanation 
of  which  is  to  be  found  in  the  principle  of  sympathetic 
emotion  to  be  considered  later,  that  the  more  numerous 
the  herd  or  crowd  or  society  in  which  the  individual 
finds  himself  the  more  complete  is  the  satisfaction 

* Inquiries  into  Human  Faculty,”  p.  72. 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  85 


of  this  impulse.  It  is  probably  owing  to  this  peculiarity 
of  the  instinct  that  gregarious  animals  of  so  many 
species  are  found  at  times  in  aggregations  far  larger 
than  are  necessary  for  mutual  protection  or  for  the 
securing  of  any  other  advantage.  Travellers  on  the 
prairies  of  North  America  in  the  early  days  of  explo- 
ration have  told  how  the  bison  might  sometimes  be 
seen  in  an  immense  herd  that  blackened  the  surface  of 
the  plain  for  many  miles  in  all  directions.  In  a similar 
way  some  kinds  of  deer  and  of  birds  gather  together 
and  move  from  place  to  place  in  vast  aggregations. 

Although  opinions  differ  widely  as  to  the  form  of 
primitive  human  society,  some  inclining  to  the  view 
that  it  was  a large  promiscuous  horde,  others,  with 
more  probability,  regarding  it  as  a comparatively  small 
group  of  near  blood  relativesy^lmost  all  anthropologists 
agree  that  primitive  man  was  to  some  extent  gregarious 
in  his  habits ; and  the  strength  of  the  instinct  as  it 
still  exists  in  civilised  men  lends  support  to  this 
view. 

The  gregarious  instinct  is  no  exception  to  the  rule 
that  the  human  instincts  are  liable  to  a morbid  hyper- 
trophy under  which  their  emotions  and  impulses  are 
revealed  with  exaggerated  intensity.  The  condition 
known  to  alienists  as  agoraphobia  seems  to  result  from 
the  morbidly  intense  working  of  this  instinct — the 
patient  will  not  remain  alone,  will  not  cross  a wide 
empty  space,  and  seeks  always  to  be  surrounded  by 
other  human  beings.  But  of  the  normal  man  also  it  is 
true  that,  as  Professor  James  says:  ‘‘To  be  alone  is  one 
of  the  greatest  of  evils  for  him.  Solitary  confinement  is 
by  many  regarded  as  a mode  of  torture  too  cruel 
and  unnatural  for  civilised  countries  to  adopt.  To 
one  long  pent  up  on  a desert  island  the  sight  of 
a human  footprint  or  a human  form  in  the  distance 


86 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


would  be  the  most  tumultuously  exciting  of  experi- 
ences.” ^ 

In  civilised  communities  we  may  see  evidence  of  the 
operation  of  this  instinct  on  every  hand.  /For  all  but  a 
few  exceptional,  and  generally  highly  cultivated,  persons 
the  one  essential  condition  of  recreation  is  the  being  one 
of  a crowd.  The  normal  daily  recreation  of  the  popula- 
tion of  our  towns  is  to  go  out  in  the  evening  and  to 
walk  up  and  down  the  streets  in  which  the  throng 
is  densest — the  Strand,  Oxford  Street,  or  the  Old  Kent 
Road  ; and  the  smallest  occasion — a foreign  prince 
driving  to  a railway-station  or  a Lord  Mayor’s  Show — 
will  line  the  streets  for  hours  with  many  thousands 
whose  interest  in  the  prince  or  the  show  alone  would 
hardly  lead  them  to  take  a dozen  steps  out  of  their 
way.  On  their  few  short  holidays  the  working  classes 
rush  together  from  town  and  country  alike  to  those 
presorts  in  which  they  are  assured  of  the  presence  of 
’ a large  mass  of  their  fellows.  It  is  the  same  instinct 
working  on  a slightly  higher  plane  that  brings  tens 
of  thousands  to  the  cricket  and  football  grounds  on 
half-holidays.  Crowds  of  this  sort  exert  a greater 
fascination  and  afford  a more  complete  satisfaction 
to  the  gregarious  instinct  than  the  mere  aimless  aggre- 
gations of  the  streets,  because  all  their  members  are 
simultaneously  concerned  with  the  same  objects,  all 
are  moved  by  the  same  emotions,  all  shout  and  applaud 
together.  It  would  be  absurd  to  suppose  that  it  is 
merely  the  individuals’  interest  in  the  game  that  brings 
these  huge  crowds  together.  What  proportion  of  the 
ten  thousand  witnesses  of  a football  match  would  stand 
for  an  hour  or  more  in  the  wind  and  rain,  if  each  man 
were  isolated  from  the  rest  of  the  crowd  and  saw  only 
the  players  ? 


• “ Principles  of  Psychology.' 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  87 

Even  cultured  minds  are  not  immune  to  the  fascina- 
tion of  the  herd*  Who  has  not  felt  it  as  he  has 
stood  at  the  Mansion  House  crossing  or  walked  down 
Cheapside?  How  few  prefer  at  nightfall  the  lonely 
Thames  Embankment,  full  of  mysterious  poetry  as  the 
barges  sweep  slowly  onward  with  the  flood-tide,  to  the 
garish  crowded  Strand  a hundred  yards  away ! We 
cultivated  persons  usually  say  to  ourselves,  when  we  | 
yield  to  this  fascination,  that  we  are  taking  an  in- 1 
telligent  interest  in  the  life  of  the  people.  But  such 
intellectual  interest  plays  but  a small  part,  and  beneath 
works  the  powerful  impulse  of  this  ancient  instinct. 

/The  possession  of  this  instinct,  even  in  great  strength, 
does  not  necessarily  imply  sociability  of  temperament. 
Many  a man  leads  in  London  a most  solitary,  unsociable 
life,  who  yet  would  find  it  hard  to  live  far  away  from 
the  thronged  city.  Such  men  are  like  Mr.  Galton’s 
oxen,  unsociable  but  gregarious ; and  they  illustrate  the 
fact  that  sociability,  although  it  has  the  gregarious 
instinct  at  its  foundation,  is  a more  complex,  more 
highly  developed,  tendency.  As  an  element  of  this 
more  complex  tendency  to  sociability,  the  instinct 
largely  determines  the  forms  of  the  recreations  of  even 
the  cultured  classes,  and  is  the  root  of  no  small  part  of 
the  pleasure  we  find  in  attendance  at  the  theatre,  at 
concerts,  lectures,  and  all  such  entertainments.  How 
much  more  satisfying  is  a good  play  if  one  sits  in  a 
well-filled  theatre  than  if  half  the  seats  are  empty; 
especially  if  the  house  is  unanimous  and  loud  in  the 
expression  of  its  feelings ! But  this  instinct  has  in  all 
ages  produced  more  important  social  effects  that  must 
be  considered  in  a later  chapter. 

Two  other  instincts  of  considerable  social  importance 
■ demand  a brief  mention.  The  impulse  to  collect  and 
hoard  various  objects  is  displayed  in  one  way  or  another 


88 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


by  almost  all  human  beings,  and  seems  to  be  due  to  a 
true  instinct ; it  is  manifested  by  many  animals  in  the 
blind,  unintelligent  manner  that  is  characteristic  of 
crude  instinct.  And,  like  other  instinctive  impulses  of 
man,  it  is  liable  to  become  morbidly  exaggerated,  when 
it  appears,  in  a mild  form,  as  the  collecting  mania  and, 
in  greater  excess,  as  miserliness  and  kleptomania.  Like 
other  instincts,  it  ripens  naturally  and  comes  into  play 
independently  of  all  training.  Statistical  inquiry 
among  large  numbers  of  children  has  shown  that  very 
few  attain  adult  life  without  having  made  a collection  of 
objects  of  one  kind  or  another,  usually  without  any 
definite  purpose ; such  collecting  is  no  doubt  primarily 
due  to  the  ripening  of  an  instinct  of  acquisition. 

We  seem  to  be  justified  in  assuming  in  man  an 
instinct  of  construction.  The  playful  activities  of  children 
seem  to  be  in  part  determined  by  its  impulse ; and  in 
most  civilised  adults  it  still  survives,  though  but  little 
scope  is  allowed  it  by  the  circumstances  of  the  majority. 
For  most  of  us  the  satisfaction  of  having  actually  made 
something  is  very  real,  quite  apart  from  the  value  or 
usefulness  of  the  thing  made.  And  the  simple  desire  to 
make  something,  rooted  in  this  instinct,  is  probably  a 
contributing  motive  to  all  human  constructions  from  a 
mud-pie  to  a metaphysical  system  or  a code  of  laws. 

I The  instincts  enumerated  above,  together  with  a 
inumber  of  minor  instincts,  such  as  those  that  prompt 
\to  crawling  and  walking,  are,  I think,  all  that  we  can 
jrecognise  with  certainty  in  the  constitution  of  the 
=human  mind.  Lightly  to  postulate  an  indefinite 
dumber  and  variety  of  human  instincts  is  a cheap 
and  easy  way  to  solve  psychological  problems,  and  is 
an  error  hardly  less  serious  and  less  common  than  the 
'opposite  error  of  ignoring  all  the  instincts.  How  often 
do  we  not  hear  of  the  reHg^ioiis  instinct ! Renan  asserted 


THE  PRINCIPAL  INSTINCTS  OF  MAN  89 


that  the  religious  instinct  is  as  natural  to  man  as  the 
nest-building  instinct  is  to  birds,  and  many  authors 
have  written  of  it  as  one  of  the  fundamental  attributes 
of  the  human  mind.^  But,  if  we  accept  the  doctrine  of 
the  evolution  of  man  from  animal  forms,  we  are  com- 
pelled  to  seek  the  origin  of  religious  emotions  and  ^ 

impulses  in  instincts  that  are  not  specifically  religious. 

And  consideration  of  the  conditions,  manifestations,  and  ^ ^ 
tendencies  of  religious  emotions  must  lead  to  the  same  ^ ^ 

search.  For  it  is  clear  that  religious  emotion  is  not  a ? 

simple  and  specific  variety,  such  as  could  be  conditioned 
by  any  one  instinct ; it  is  rather  a very  complex  and 
diversified  product  of  the  co-operation  of  several 
instincts,  which  bring  forth  very  heterogeneous  manifes- 
tations, differing  from  one  another  as  widely  as  light 
from  darkness,  according  to  the  degree  and  kind  of 
guidance  afforded  by  imagination  and  reason. 

Much  has  been  written  in  recent  years  of  instincts  of 


inuta^,^of^ympat^  and  the  postulation 

of  these  instincts  seems  to  have  been  allowed  to  pass 
without  challenge.  Yet,  as  I shall  show  in  the  following 
section,  there  is  no  sufficient  justification  for  it ; for  all 
the  behaviour  attributed  to  these  three  supposed  in- 
stincts may  be  otherwise  accounted  for. 

Professor  James  admits  an  instinct  of  enooilation  or 
rjy^y,  but  the  propriety  of  this  admission  is  to  my  mind 
questionable.  It  is  possible  that  all  the  behaviour 
which  is  attributed  to  this  instinct  may  be  accounted 
for  as  proceeding  from  the  instincts  of  pugnacity  and  of 
self-display  or  self-assertion.  It  would,  I think,  be 
difficult  to  make  out  any  good  case  for  the  existence  of 
such  an  instinct  in  the  animal  world.  But  a suggestion 
as  to  the  peculiar  position  and  origin  of  a human 
instinct  of  emulation  will  be  made  in  the  next  chapter. 

* Cf.  p.  302. 


CHAPTER  IV 


SOME  GENERAL  OR  NON-SPECIFIC  INNATE 
TENDENCIES 

IN  this  chapter  we  have  to  consider  certain  innate 
tendencies  of  the  human  mind  of  great  importance 
for  social  life  which  are  sometimes  ascribed  to  special 
instincts,  but  which  are  more  properly  classed  apart  from 
the  instinctive  tendencies.  For  we  have  seen  that  an  in- 
stinct, no  matter  how  profoundly  modified  it  may  be  in 
the  developed  human  mind  as  regards  the  conditions  of 
its  excitement  and  the  actions  in  which  it  manifests  itself, 
always  retains  unchanged  its  essential  and  permanent 
nucleus ; this  nucleus  is  the  central  part  of  the  innate 
disposition,  the  excitement  of  which  determines  an 
affective  state  or  emotion  of  specific  quality  and  a 
native  impulse  towards  some  specific  end.  And  the 
tendencies  to  be  considered  in  this  chapter  have  no 
such  specific  characters,  but  are  rather  of  a many- 
sided  and  general  nature.  Consider,  for  example,  the 
tendency  to  imitate — the  modes  of  action  in  which 
this  tendency  expresses  itself  and  the  accompanying 
subjective  states  are  as  various  as  the  things  or  actions 
that  can  be  imitated. 

Sympathy  or  the  Sympathetic  Induction  of  the  Emotions 

The  three  most  important  of  these  pseudo-instincts, 
as  they  might  be  called,  are  suggestion,  imitation,  and 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES  91 


sympathy.  They  are  glosely  allied  as  regards  thei^ 
effects,  for  in  each  case^The  process  in  which  the  ten- 
dency manifests  itself  involves  an  interaction  ,hetw£gp 
at  least  two  iildiyldual^  one  ofjwhom  is  the  agent, 
while  the  other  is  the  person  acted  upon  or  patient ; 
and^^in  each  case  the  result  of  the  process  is^spme  de- 
gree  of  assimilation  of  the  actions  and  mental  state 
of  the  patient  to  those  of  the,  agent.  They  are  three 
I forms  of  mental  interaction  of  fundamental  importance 
for  all  social  life,  both  of  men  and  animals.  These 
[processes  of  mental  interaction,  of  impression  and  re- 
ception, may  involve  chiefly  the_cpgnitiye^^^  of 

I mental  process,  or  its_affectiye„or  c^ 

In  the  first  case,  when  some  presentation,  idea,  or  belief 
of  the  agent  directly  induces  a similar  presentation, 
idea,  or  belief  in  the  patient,  the  process  is  called  one 
of  suggestion ; when  an  affective  or  emotional  excite- 
ment of  the  agent  induces  a similar  affective  excitement 
in  the  patient,  the  process  is  one  of  sympathy  or  sym- 
pathetic induction  of  emotion  or  feeling;  when  the  most 
prominent  result  of  the  process  of  interaction  is  the 
assimilation  of  the  bodily  movements  of  the  patient 
to  those  of  the  agent,  we  speak  of  imitation.  ^ 

Now,  M.  Tardei  and  Professor  Baldwin^  have  singled 
out  imitation  as  the  all-important  social  process,  and 
Baldwin,  like  most  contemporary  writers,  attributes  it 
to  an  instinct  of  imitation.  But  careful  consideration 
of  the  nature  of  imitative  actions  shows  that  they  are 
of  many  kinds,  that  they  issue  from  mental  processes 
of  a number  of  different  types,  and  that  none  are  attri- 
butable to  a specific  instinct  of  imitation,  while  many 
are  due  to  sympathy  and  others  to  suggestion.  We 

* **  Les  Lois  de  rimitation.”  Paris,  1904. 

• Mental  Developmerj^,”  and  Social  and  Ethical  Interpre- 
tations.*' 


92 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


must  therefore  first  consider  sympathy  and  suggestion, 
and,  after  defining  them  as  precisely  as  possible,  go  on 
to  consider  the  varieties  of  imitative  action. 

Sympathy  is  by  some  authors  ascribed  to  a special 
instinct  of  sympathy,  and  even  Professor  James  has  been 
misled  by  the  confused  usage  of  common  speech  and  has 
said  “sympathy  is  an  emotion,”*  But  the  principles 
maintained  in  the  foregoing  chapter  will  not  allow  us  to 
accept  either  of  these  views/^ The  word  “ sympathy,”  as 
[popularly  used,  generally  implies  a tender  regard  for  the 
jperson  with  whom  we  are  said  to  sympathise.  But 
jsuch  sympathy  is  only  one  special  and  complex  form  of 
[sympathetic  emotion,  in  the  strict  and  more  general 
|sense  of  the  words. /The  fundamental  and  primitive 
Torm  of  sympathy  is  exactly  what  the  word  implies, 
ja  suffering  with,  the  experiencing  of  any  feeling  or 
'emotion  when  and  because  we  observe  in  other  persons 
ior  creatures  the  expression  of  that  feeling  or  emotion.^ 

Sympathetic  induction  of  emotion  is  displayed  in  the 
ajmpJss.L  aad,  n]i9st„m  fashion  by  many, 

probably  by  all,  of  the  gregarious  animals ; and  it  is 
easy  to  understand  how  greatly  it  aids  them  in  their 
struggle  for  existence.  One  of  the  clearest  and  com- 
monest examples  is  the  spread  of  fear  and  its  flight- 
impulse  among  the  members  of  a flock  or  herd.  Many 
gregarious  animals  utter  when  startled  a characteristic 
cry  of  fear ; when  this  cry  is  emitted  by  one  member  of 
a flock  or  herd,  it  immediately  excites  the  flight-impulse 
in  all  of  its  fellows  who  are  within  hearing  of  it ; the 
whole  herd,  flock,  or  covey  takes  to  flight  like  one 
individual.  Or  again,  one  of  a pack  of  gregarious 

• Of.  cil.,  ii.,  p.  410, 

• This  truth  has  been  clearly  expressed  by  Herbert  Spencer 
("  Principles  of  Psychology,”  vol.  ii.,  p.  563),  and  Bain  recognised 
it,  although,  as  we  have  seen,  he  failed  to  hold  it  consistently. 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES  93 


hunting  animals,  dogs  or  wolves,  comes  upon  a fresh 
trail,  sights  the  prey,  and  pursues  it,  uttering  a charac- 
teristic yelp  that  excites  the  instinct  of  pursuit  in  all  his 
fellows  and  brings  them  yelping  behind  him.  Or  two 
dogs  begin  to  growl  or  fight,  and  at  once  all  the  dogs 
within  sound  and  sight  stiffen  themselves  and  show 
every  symptom  of  anger.  Or  one  beast  in  a herd  stands 
arrested,  gazing  in  curiosity  on  some  unfamiliar  object, 
and  presently  his  fellows  also,  to  whom  the  object  may 
be  invisible,  display  curiosity  and  come  up  to  join  in 
the  examination  of  the  object.  An  all  these  cases  we 
observe  only  that  the  behaviour  of  one  animal,  upon 
the  excitement  of  an  instinct,  immediately  evokes 
similar  behaviour  in  those  of  his  fellows  who  perceive 
his  expressions  of  excitement.  /But  we  can  hardly  doubt 
that  in  each  case  the  instinctive  behaviour  is  accom- 
panied by  the  appropriate  emotion  and  felt  impulse. 
/Sympathy  of  this  crude  kind  is  the  cement  that 
binds  animal  societies  together,  renders  the  actions  of 
all  members  of  a group  harmonious,  and  allows  them 
to  reap  some  of  the  prime  advantages  of  social  life  in 
spite  of  lack  of  intelligence. 

(How  comes  it  that  the  instinctive  behaviour  of  one 
animal  directly  excites  similar  behaviour  on  the  part  of 
his  fellows?  /No  satisfactory  answer  to  this  question 
seems  to  have  been  hitherto  proposed,  although  this 
kind  of  behaviour  has  been  described  and  discussed 
often  enough.  Not  many  years  ago  it  would  have 
seemed  sufficient  to  answer.  It  is  due  to  instinct.  But 
that  answer  will  hardly  satisfy  us  to-day.  / 1 think  the 
facts  compel  us  to  assume  that  in  the  gregarious  animals 
each  of  the  principal  instincts  has  a special  perceptual 
inlet  (or  recipient  afferent  part)  that  is  adapted  to 
receive  and  to  elaborate  the  sense-impressions  made 
by  the  expressions  of  the  same  instinct  in  other  animals 

J 


94 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


of  the  same  species — that,  e.g,y  the  fear-instinct  has, 
besides  others,  a special  perceptual  inlet  that  renders  it 
excitable  by  the  sound  of  the  cry  of  fear,  the  instinct 
of  pugnacity  a perceptual  inlet  that  renders  it  excitable 
by  the  sound  of  the  roar  of  anger. 

^ Human  sympathy  has  its  roots  in  similar  specialisa- 
tions of  the  instinctive  dispositions  on  their  afferent 
sides.  Mn  early  childhood  sympathetic  emotion  is 
almost  wholly  of  this  simple  kind ; and  all  through  life 
most  of  us  continue  to  respond  in  this  direct  fashion  to 
the  expressions  of  the  feelings  and  emotions  of  our 
fellow-men.  This  sympathetic  induction  of  emotion 
and  feeling  may  be  observed  in  children  at  an  age  at 
iv'hich  they  cannot  be  credited  with  understanding  of  the 
significance  of  the  expressions  that  provoke  their  re- 
actions. Perhaps  the  expression  to  which  they  respond 
earliest  is  the  sound  of  the  wailing  of  other  children. 
A little  later  the  sight  of  a smiling  face,  the  expression 
of  pleasure,  provokes  a smile.  Later  still  fear,  curiosity, 
and,  I think,  anger,  are  communicated  readily  in  this 
direct  fashion  from  one  child  to  another.  Laughter  is 
notoriously  infectious  all  through  life,  and  this,  though 
not  a truly  instinctive  expression,  affords  the  most 
familiar  example  of  sympathetic  induction  of  an  affective 
state.  This  immediate  and  unrestrained  responsiveness 
to  the  emotional  expressions  of  others  is  one  of  the  great 
charms  of  childhood.  One  may  see  it  particularly  well 
displayed  by  the  children  of  some  savage  races 
(especially  perhaps  of  the  negro  race),  whom  it  renders 
wonderfully  attractive. 

/ Adults  vary  much  in  the  degree  to  which  they  display 
these  sympathetic  reactions,  but  in  few  or  none  are  they 
wholly  lacking.  A merry  face  makes  us  feel  brighter ; 
a melancholy  face  may  cast  a gloom  over  a cheerful 
company ; when  we  witness  the  painful  emotion  of 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES  95 


others,  we  experience  sympathetic  pain ; when  we  see 
others  terror-stricken  or  hear  their  scream  of  terror,  we 
suffer  a pang  of  fear  though  we  know  nothing  of  the 
cause  of  their  emotion  or  are  indifferent  to  it;  anger 
provokes  anger ; the  curious  gaze  of  the  passer-by  stirs 
our  curiosity  ; and  a display  of  tender  emotion  touches, 
as  we  say,  a tender  chord  in  our  hearts.*  In  short,  each 
of  the  great  primary  emotions  that  has  its  character- 
istic and  unmistakable  bodily  expression  seems  to 
be  capable  of  being  excited  by  way  of  this  immediate 
sympathetic  response.  If,  then,  the  view  here  urged  is 
true,  we  must  not  say,  as  many  authors  have  done,  that 
sympathy  is  due  to  an  instinct,  but  rather  that  sympathy 
is  founded  upon  a special  adaptation  of  the  receptive 
side  of  each  of  the  principal  instinctive  dispositions,  an 
adaptation  that  renders  each  Jnstinct  capable  of  bei^ 
excited  on  the  perception  of  the  bodily  expressions  of 
the  excitement  of  the  same  instinct  in  other  person^ 

It  has  been  pointed  out  on  a previous  page  that  this 
primitive  sympathy  iniplies  none  of  the_higher^  m 
qualities.  There  are  persons  who  are  exquisitively  sym- 
pathetic in  this  sense  of  feeling  with  another,  experi- 

* Shortly  after  writing  these  lines  I was  holding  a child  in  my 
arms,  looking  out  of  window  on  a dark  night.  There  came  a 
blinding  flash  of  lightning  and,  after  some  seconds,  a crash  of 
thunder.  The  child  was  pleased  by  the  lightning,  but  at  the  first 
crack  of  thunder  she  screamed  in  terror ; immediately  upon 
hearing  the  scream,  I experienced,  during  a fraction  of  a second, 
a pang  of  fear  that  could  not  have  been  more  horrible  had  I been 
threatened  with  all  the  terrors  of  hell.  I am  not  at  all  disturbed 
by  thunder  when  alone.  This  incident  illustrates  very  well  two 
points — first  the  sympathetic  induction  of  emotion  by  immediate 
instinctive  reaction  to  the  expression  of  emotion  by  another  ; 
secondly,  the  specific  character  of  loud  noises  as  excitants  of 
fear.  Regarded  as  merely  a sensory  stimulus,  the  flash  of  light- 
ning was  far  more  violent  than  the  thunder  ; yet  it  provoked  no 
fear  in  the  child. 


96 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


endng  distress  at  the  sight  of  pain  and  grief,  pleasure 
at  the  sight  of  joy,  who  yet  are  utterly  selfish  and  are  not 
moved  in  the  least  degree  to  relieve  the  distress  they 
observe  in  others  or  to  promote  the  pleasure  that  is 
reflected  in  themselves.  Their  sympathetic  sensibility 
merely  leads  them  to  avoid  all  contact  with  distressful 
persons,  books,  or  scenes,  and  to  seek  the  company  of 
the  careless  and  the  gay.  And  a too  great  sensibility  of 
this  kind  is  even  adverse  to  the  higher  kind  of  conduct 
that  seeks  to  relieve  pain  and  to  promote  happiness  ; for 
the  sufferer’s  expressions  of  pain  may  induce  so  lively  a 
distress  in  the  onlooker  as  to  incapacitate  him  for  giving 
help.  Thus  in  any  case  of  personal  accident,  or  where 
surgical  procedure  is  necessary,  many  a woman  is  ren- 
dered quite  useless  by  her  sympathetic  distress.* 


Suggestion  and  Suggestibility 

“ Suggestion  ” is  a word  that  has  been  taken  over  from 
popular  speech  and  been  specialised  for  psychological 
use.  But  even  among  psychologists  it  has  been  used  in 
two  rather  different  senses.  A generation  ago  it  was 
used  in  a sense  very  similar  to  that  which  it  has  in  common 
speech ; one  idea  was  said  to  suggest  another.  But  this 
purpose  is  adequately  served  by  the  word  “ reproduc- 
tion,” and  there  is  a growing  tendency  to  use  “ sugges- 
tion” only  in  a still  more  technical  and  strict  manner,  and 
it  is  in  this  stricter  sense  that  it  is  used  in  these  pages. 
Psychologists  have  only  in  recent  years  begun  to  realise 
the  vast  scope  and  importance  of  suggestion  and  sug- 
gestibility in  social  lifej/Their  attention  was  directed  to 
r the  study  of  suggestion  by  the  recognition  that  the 

‘ This  is  very  noticeable  in  the  case  of  vomiting.  A tender 
mother  will  sometimes  turn  away  from  a vomiting  child  with  an 
irresistible  impulse  of  repulsion. 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES  97 


phenomena  of  hypnotism,  so  long  disputed  and  derided, 
I are  genuine  expressions  of  a peculiar  abnormal  condi- 
tion of  the  mind,  and  that  the  leading  symptom  of  this 
condition  of  hypnosis  is  the  patient’s  extreme  liability  to 
’ accept  with  conviction  any  proposition  submitted  to  him. 
^ This  peculiar  condition  was  called  one  of  suggestibility, 
< and  the  process  of  communication  between  agent  and 
! patient  which  leads  to  the  latter’s  acceptance  of  any  pro- 
\^osition  was  called  suggestion.  There  was  for  some  time 
a tendency  to  regard  suggestibility  as  necessarily  an  ab- 
normal condition  and  suggestion  as  a psychological  curi- 
osity. /But  very  quickly  it  was  seen  that  there  are  many 
degrees  of  suggestibility,  ranging  from  the  slight  degree 
of  the  normal  educated  adult  to  the  extreme  degree  of 
the  deeply  hypnotised  subject,  and  that  suggestion  is  a 
process  constantly  at  work  among  us,  the  understanding 
of  which  is  of  extreme  importance  for  the  social  sciences. 

It  is  difficult  to  find  a definition  of  suggestion  which 
will  include  all  varieties  and  will  yet  mark  it  off  clearly 
from  other  processes  of  communication ; and  there  is 
no  sharp  line  to  be  drawn,  for  in  many  processes  by 
which  conviction  is  produced  there  is  a more  or  less 
strong  element  of  suggestion  co-operating  with  logical 
processes.  The  following  definition  will,  I think,  cover 
all  varieties : Suggestion  is  a process  of  communication 
resulting  in  the  acceptance  with  conviction  of  the  communi- 
cated proposition  in  the  absence  of  logically  adequate 
grounds  for  its  acceptance.  The  measure  of  the  suggesti- 
bility of  any  subject  is,  then,  the  readiness  with  which  he 
thus  accepts  propositions.  Of  course,  the  proposition 
is  not  necessarily  communicated  in  formal  language,  it 
may  be  implied  by  a mere  gesture  or  interjection.  The 
suggestibility  of  any  subject  is  not  of  the  same  degree  at 
all  times  ; it  varies  not  only  according  to  the  topic  and 
according  to  the  source  from  which  the  proposition  is 


98 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


communicated,  but  also  with  the  condition  of  the  sub- 
N^ecPs  brain  from  hour  to  hour.  /The  least  degree  of 
suggestibility  is  that  of  a wide-awake,  self-reliant  man 
of  settled  convictions,  possessing  a large  store  of  system- 
atically organised  knowledge  which  he  habitually  brings 
to  bear  in  criticism  of  all  statements  made  to  him. 
Greater  degrees  of  suggestibility  are  due  in  the  main  to 
conditions  of  four  kinds — (i)  abnormal  states  of  the 
brain,  of  which  the  relative  dissociation  obtaining  in 
hysteria,  hypnosis,  normal  sleep,  and  fatigue,  is  the  most 
K important  ;i^2)  deficiency  of  knowledge  or  convictions 
relating  to  the  topic  in  regard  to  which  the  suggestion  is 
^ [made,  and  imperfect  organisation  of  knowledge;  (3)  the 
impressive  character  of  the  source  from  which  the  sug- 
Kgested  proposition  is  communicated  ; (4)  peculiarities  of 
ithe  character  and  native  disposition  of  the  subject. 

Of  these  the  first  need  not  engage  our  attention,  as  it 
has  but  little  part  in  normal  social  life.  The  operation 
of  the  other  three  conditions  may  be  illustrated  by  an 
example.  Suppose  a man  of  wide  scientific  culture  to 
confronted  with  the  proposition  that  the  bodies  of 
the  dead  will  one  day  rise  from  their  graves  to  live  a 
new  life.  He  does  not  accept  it,  because  he  knows  that 
dead  bodies  buried  in  graves  undergo  a rapid  and  com- 
plete decomposition,  and  because  the  acceptance  of  the 
proposition  would  involve  a shattering  of  the  whole  of 
his  strongly  and  systematically  organised  knowledge  of 
natural  processes.  But  the  same  proposition  may  be 
readily  accepted  by  a child  or  a savage  for  lack  of  any 
system  of  critical  belief  and  knowledge  that  would 
conflict  with  it.  Such  persons  may  accept  almost  any 
extravagant  proposition  with  primitive  credulity.  But, 
for  the  great  majority  of  civilised  adults  of  little  scien- 
tific culture,  the  acceptance  or  rejection  of  the  proposi- 
tion will  depend  upon  the  third  and  fourth  of  the 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES  99 


conditions  enumerated  above.  Even  a young  child  or  a 
savage  may  reject  such  a proposition  with  scorn  if  it  is 
made  to  him  by  one  of  his  fellows ; but,  if  the  statement 
is  solemnly  affirmed  by  a recognised  and  honoured 
teacher,  supported  by  all  the  prestige  and  authority  of 
an  ancient  and  powerful  Church,  not  only  children  and 
savages,  but  most  civilised  adults,  will  accept  it,  in  spite 
of  a certain  opposition  offered  by  other  beliefs  and 
knowledge  that  they  possess.  Suggestion  mainly  de- 
pendent for  its  success  on  this  condition  may  be  called 
prestige  suggestion. 

But  not  all  persons  of  equal  knowledge  and  cultur^' 
are  equally  open  to  prestige  suggestion.  Here  the  fourtn 
factor  comes  into  play,  namely,  character  and  native  dis- 
position.y^As  regards  the  latter  the  most  important  condi- 
tion determining  individual  suggestibility  seems  to  be  the 
relative  strengths  of  the  two  instincts  that  were  discussed 
in  Chapter  III.  under  the  names  “ instincts  of  self-asser- 
tion” and  ‘‘subjection.”  Personal  contact  with  any  of 
our  fellows  seems  regularly  to  bring  one  or  other,  or  both, 
of  these  two  instincts  into  play.  The  presence  of  persons 
whom  we  regard  as  our  inferiors  in  the  particular  situa- 
tion of  the  moment  evokes  the  impulse  of  self-assertion  ; 
towards  such  persons  we  are  but  little  or  not  at  all 
suggestible.  But/m  the  presence  of  persons  who  make 
upon  us  an  impression  of  power  or  of  superiority  of  any 
kind,  whether  merely  of  size  or  physical  strength,  or  of 
social  standing,  or  of  intellectual  reputation,  or,  perhaps, 
even  of  tailoring,  the  impulse  of  submission  is  brought 
into  play,  and  we  are  thrown  into  a submissive,  receptive 
attitude  towards  them  ; or,  if  the  two  impulses  are 
simultaneously  evoked,  there  takes  place  a painful  » 
struggle  between  them  and  we  suffer  the  complex  emo-  * 
tional  disturbance  known  as  l^shful  feeling.^  In  so  far 
* See  p.  146,  for  bashfulness. 


100 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


as  the  impulse  of  submission  predominates  we  are  sug« 
gestible  towards  the  person  whose  presence  evokes  it. 
Persons  in  whom  this  instinct  is  relatively  strong  will, 
other  things  being  the  same,  be  much  subject  to  prestige 
suggestion  ; while,  on  the  other  hand,  persons  in  whom 
this  impulse  is  weak  and  the  opposed  instinct  of  self- 
assertion  is  strong  will  be  apt  to  be  self-confident, 
“ cocksure  ” persons,  and  to  be  but  little  subject  to 
’^prestige  suggestion.  In  the  course  of  character-formation 
by  social  intercourse,  excessive  strength  of  either  of 
these  impulses  may  be  rectified  or  compensated  to  some 
extent ; the  able,  but  innately  submissive,  man  may  gain 
a reasonable  confidence ; the  man  of  self-assertive  dis- 
position may,  if  not  stupid,  learn  to  recognise  his  own 
weaknesses ; and  in  so  far  as  these  compensations  are 
effected  liability  to  prestige  suggestion  will  be  diminished 
or  increased. 

Children  are,  then,  inevitably  suggestible,  firstly,  be- 
cause of  their  lack  of  knowledge  and  lack  of  systematic 
organisation  of  such  knowledge  as  they  have  ; secondly, 
because  the  superior  size,  strength,  knowledge,  and 
reputation  of  their  elders  tend  to  evoke  the  impulse  of 
submission  and  to  throw  them  into  the  receptive  atti- 
tude. And  it  is  in  virtue  largely  of  their  suggestibility 
that  they  so  rapidly  absorb  the  knowledge,  beliefs,  and 
especially  the  sentiments,  of  their  social  environment. 
But  most  adults  also  remain  suggestible,  especially  to- 
wards  . mass-suggestion  and  towards  the  propositions 
which  they  know  to  be  supported  by  the  whole  weight 
of  society  or  by  a long  tradition.  To  the  consideration 
of  the  social  importance  of  suggestion  we  must  return 
in  a later  chapter. 

^This  brief  discussion  may  be  concluded  by  the  re- 
pudiation of  a certain  peculiar  implication  attached 
to  the  word  “ suggestion  ” by  some  writers.  / They 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES  loi 


speak  of  “ suggestive  ideas  ” and  of  ideas  working 
suggestively  in  the  mind,  implying  that  such  ideas  and 
such  working  have  some  peculiar  potency,  a potency 
that  would  seem  to  be  almost  of  a magical  character ; 
but  they  do  not  succeed  in  making  clear  in  what  way 
these  ideas  and  their  operations  differ  from  others.  The 
potency  of  the  idea  conveyed  by  suggestion  seems  to 
be  nothing  but  the  potency  of  conviction ; and  convic- 
tions produced  by  logical  methods  seem  to  have  no  less 
power  to  determine  thought  and  action,  or  even  to  influ- 
ence the  vital  processes,  than  those  produced  by  sugges- 
tion ; the  principal  difference  is  that  by  suggestion  con- 
viction may  be  produced  in  regard  to  propositions  that 
are  insusceptible  of  logical  demonstration,  or  even  are 
opposed  to  the  evidence  of  perception  and  inference. " 

^ few  words  must  be  said  about  contra-sufi^estionl 
By  this  word  it  is  usual  to  denote  the  mode  of  action  of 
one  individual  on  another  which  results  in  the  second 
accepting,  in  the  absence  of  adequate  logical  grounds, 
the  contrary  of  the  proposition  asserted  or  implied  by 
the  agent.  There  are  persons  with  whom  this  result  is 
very  liable  to  be  produced  by  any  attempt  to  exert 
suggestive  influence,  or  even  by  the  most  ordinary  and 
casual  utterance.  One  remarks  to  such  a person  that 
it  is  a fine  day,  and,  though,  up  to  that  moment,  he  may 
have  formulated  no  opinion  about  the  weather,  and  have 
been  quite  indifferent  to  it,  he  at  once  replies,  “ Well,  I 
don’t  agree  with  you.  I think  it  is  perfectly  horrid 
weather.”  Or  one  says  to  him,  “ I think  you  ought  to 
take  a holiday,”  and,  though  he  had  himself  contem- 
plated this  course,  he  replies,  “No,  I don’t  need  one,” 
and  becomes  more  immovably  fixed  in  this  opinion  and 
the  corresponding  course  of  action  the  more  he  is  urged 
to  adopt  their  opposites.  Some  children  display  this 
contra-suggestibility  very  strongly  for  a period  and 


102 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


afterwards  return  to  a normal  degree  of  suggestibility. 
But  in  some  persons  it  becomes  habitual  or  chronic; 
they  take  a pride  in  doing  and  saying  nothing  like  other 
people,  in  dressing  and  eating  differently,  in  defying  all 
the  minor  social  conventions.  Commonly,  I believe, 
such  persons  regard  themselves  as  displaying  great 
strength  of  character  and  cherish  their  peculiarity.  In 
such  cases  the  permanence  of  the  attitude  may  have 
very  complex  mental  causes ; but  in  its  simpler 
instances,  and  probably  at  its  inception  in  all  instances, 
Icontra-suggestion  seems  to  be  determined  by  the  undue 
jdominance  of  the  impulse  of  self-assertion  over  that  of 
submission,  owing  to  the  formation  of  some  rudimentary 
Sentiment  of  dislike  for  personal  influence  resulting 
jfrom  an  unwise  exercise  of  it — a sentiment  which  may 
have  for  its  object  the  influence  of  some  one  person  or 
personal  influence  in  general. 

Imitation 

This  word  has  been  used  by  M.  Tarde  in  his  well- 
known  sociological  treatises  to  cover  processes  of 
sympathy  and  suggestion  as  well  as  the  processes 
to  which  the  name  is  more  usually  applied,  and,  since  the 
verb  “to  suggest”  can  be  applied  only  to  the  part  of 
the  agent  in  the  process  of  suggestion,  and  since  we 
need  some  verb  to  describe  the  part  of  the  patient,  it  is 
perhaps  legitimate  to  extend  the  meaning  of  the  word 
“imitate”  in  this  way,  so  as  to  make  it  cover  the 
process  of  accepting  a suggestion. 

-^^ut  in  the  more  strict  sense  of  the  word  “ imitation,” 
it  is  applicable  only  to  the  imitation  or  copying  by  one 
individual  of  the  actions,  the  bodily  movements,  of 
another.  Imitation  and  imitativeness  in  this  narrower 
sense  of  the  words  are  usually  ascribed  to  an  instinct. 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES  103 


Thus  James  writes:  “This  sort  of  imitativeness  is 
possessed  by  man  in  common  with  other  gregarious 
animals,  and  is  an  instinct  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the 
term/'^  Baldwin  also  uses  the  phrase  “instinct  of 
imitation  ” and  its  equivalents, 2 but  applies  the  word 
“ imitation  ” to  so  great  a variety  of  processes  that  it  can 
hardly  be  supposed  he  means  to  attribute  all  of  them  to 
the  operation  of  this  assumed  instinct. 

The  reasons  for  refusing 

imitation  may  be  stated  as  follows  :-4lmitative  actions 
are  extremely  varied,  for  every  kind  of  action  may 
be  imitated ; there  is  therefore  nothing  specific  in  the 
nature  of  the  imitative  movements  and  in  the  nature  of 
the  sense-impressions  by  which  the  movements  are 
excited  or  guided.  ^)And  this  variety  of  movement  and 
of  sense-impression  is  not  due  to  complication  of  a 
congenital  disposition,  such  as  takes  place  in  the  case 
of  all  the  true  instincts ; for  this  variety  characterises 
imitative  movements  from  the  outset. More  important 
is  the  fact  that,  underlying  the  varieties  of  imitative 
action,  there  is  no  common  affective  state  and  no  common 
impulse  seeking  satisfaction  in  some  particular  change 
of  state.  And  we  have  seen  reason  to  regard  such  a 
specific  impulse,  prompting  to  continued  action  until  its 
satisfaction  is  secured,  as  the  most  essential  feature  of 
every  truly  instinctive  process.  H)  Further,  if  we  consider 
the  principal  varieties  of  imitative  action,  we  find  that 
all  are  explicable  without  the  assumption  of  a special 
instinct  of  imitation.  Imitative  actions  of  at  least  three, 
perhaps  of  five,  distinct  classes  may  be  distinguished, 
according  to  the  kind  of  mental  process  of  which  they 
are  the  outcome. 

* “ Principles  of  Psychology,”  vol.  ii.,  p.  408. 

■ **  Mental  Development,  Methods  and  Processes,*'  3rd  ed., 
p.  281.  New  York,  1906. 


104 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


1.  The  expressive  actions  that  are  sympathetically 
excited  in  the  way  discussed  under  the  head  of  “ sym- 
pathy ” form  one  class  of  imitative  actions.  Thus,  when 
a child  responds  to  a smile  with  a smile,  when  he  cries 
on  hearing  another  child  cry,  or  when  he  runs  to  hide 
himself  on  seeing  other  children  running  frightened  to 
shelter,  he  may  be  said  to  be  imitating  the  actions  of 
others.  If  we  were  right  in  our  conclusions  regarding 
the  responses  of  primitive  sympathy,  these  outwardly 
imitative  actions  are  instinctive,  and  are  due,  not  to  an 
instinct  of  imitation,  but  to  special  adaptations  of  the 
principal  instinctive  dispositions  on  their  sensory  sides, 
and  they  are  secondary  to  the  sympathetic  induction 
of  the  emotions  and  feelings  they  express.  Imitative 
actions  of  this  sort  are  displayed  by  all  the  gregarious 
animals,  and  they  are  the  only  kind  of  which  most 
of  the  animals  seem  capable.  They  are  displayed  on  a 
great  scale  by  crowds  of  human  beings  and  are  the 
principal  source  of  the  wild  excesses  of  which  crowds 
are  so  often  guilty. 

2.  Imitative  actions  of  a second  class  are  simple 
ideo-motor  actions.  The  clearest  examples  are 
afforded  by  subjects  in  hypnosis  and  in  certain  other 
abnormal  conditions.  Many  hypnotised  subjects  will,  if 
their  attention  is  forcibly  drawn  to  the  movements 
of  the  hypnotiser,  imitate  his  every  action.  A certain 
proportion  of  the  people  of  the  Malay  race  are  afflicted 
with  a disorder  known  as  /dm/i,  * which  renders 
them  liable  to  behave  like  the  hypnotic  subject  in  this 
respect.  And  all  of  us,  if  our  attention  is  keenly 
concentrated  on  the  movements  of  another  person,  are 
apt  to  make,  at  least  in  a partial  incipient  fashion, 

' An  excellent  account  of  this  peculiar  affliction  may  be  found 
in  Mr.  Hugh  Clifford’s  “Studies  in  Brown  Humanity,’’  as  also  in 
Sir  F.  A.  Swettenham’s  " Malay  Sketches." 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES  105 


every  movement  we  observe — e.g'.,  on  watching  a difficult 
stroke  in  billiards,  the  balancing  of  a tight-rope  walker, 
the  rhythmic  swaying  of  a dancer.  In  all  these  cases 
the  imitative  movement  seems  to  be  due  to  the  fact  that 
the  visual  presentation  of  the  movement  of  another  is 
apt  to  evoke  the  representation  of  a similar  movement 
of  one’s  own  body,  wWdiJikfi..a]LmQtar  lepresentations, 
tends  to  realise  itself  immediately  in  moye,ment.  Many 
of  the  imitative  movements  of  children  are  of  this 
class.  Some  person  attracts  a child’s  curious  attention, 
by  reason  perhaps  of  some  unfamiliar  trait ; the  child 
becomes  absorbed  in  watching  him  and  presently 
imitates  his  movements.  It  seems  to  be  in  virtue  of 
this  simple  ideo-motor  imitation  That  a child  so  easily 
picks  up,  as  we  say,  the  peculiarities  of  gesture,  and  the 
facial  expressions  and  deportment  generally,  of  those 
among  whom  he  lives.  /^This  kind  of  imitation  may 
be  in  part  voluntary  and  so  merges  into  a third  kind — 
deliberate,  voluntary,  or  self-conscious  imitation. 

3.  Some  person,  or  some  kind  of  skilled  action, 
excites  our  admiration,  and  we  take  the  admired  person 
for  our  model  in  all  things  or  deliberately  set  ourselves 
to  imitate  the  action. 

M,  Between  the  second  and  third  kinds  is  a fourth  kind 
of  imitation  allied  to  both,  and  affording  for  the  child  a 
transition  from  the  one  to  the  other.  In  cases  of  this 
fourth  type  the  imitator,  a child  say,  observes  a certain 
action,  and  his  attention  is  concentrated,  not  on  the 
movements,  but  on  the  effects  produced  by  the  move- 
ments. When  the  child  again  finds  himself  in  a situation 
similar  to  that  of  the  person  he  has  observed,  the  idea 
of  the  effect  observed  comes  back  to  mind  and  perhaps 
leads  directly  to  action.  For  example,  a child  observes 
an  elder  person  throw  a piece  of  paper  on  the  fire ; then, 
when  on  a later  occasion  the  child  finds  himself  in  the 


io6 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


presence  of  fire  and  paper,  he  is  very  apt  to  imitate  the 
action  ; he  produces  a similar  effect,  though  he  may  do 
so  by  means  of  a very  different  combination  of  move- 
ments. This  kind  of  imitation  is  perhaps  in  many  cases 
to  be  regarded  as  simple  ideo-motor  action  due  to  the 
tendency  of  the  idea  to  realise  itself  in  action  ; but  in 
other  cases  various  impulses  may  be  operative. 

5, For  the  sake  of  completeness  a fifth  kind  of  imitation 
may  be  mentioned.  / It  is  the  imitation  by  very  young 
children  of  movements  that  are  not  expressive  of  feeling 
pr  emotion  : it  is  manifested  at  an  age  when  the  child 
cannot  be  credited  with  ideas  of  movement  or  with 
deliberate  self-conscious  imitation.  A few  instances  of 
this  sort  have  been  reported  by  reliable  observers  ; e.g,^ 
Preyer^  stated  that  his  child  imitated  the  protrusion  of 
his  lips  when  in  the  fourth  month  of  life.  These  cases 
have  been  regarded,  by  those  who  have  not  themselves 
witnessed  similar  actions,  as  chance  coincidences, 
because  it  is  impossible  to  bring  them  under  any 
recognised  type  of  imitation.  I have,  however,  carefully 
verified  the  occurrence  of  this  sort  of  imitation  in  two  of 
my  own  children ; one  of  them  on  several  occasions  during 
his  fourth  month  repeatedly  put  out  his  tongue  when 
the  person  whose  face  he  was  watching  made  this  move- 
ment. For  the  explanation  of  any  such  simple  imitation 
of  a particular  movement  at  this  early  age,  we  have  to 
assume  the  existence  of  a very  siniple  perceptuaf  d^ 
tion  having  this  specific  rnotor  te^^  and,  since  we 

cannot  suppose  such  a disposition  to  have  been  acquired 
at  this  age,  we  are  compelled  to  suppose  it  to  be  innately 
Ptgani^d.  an  innate  disposition  would  be  an 

extremely  simple  rudimentary  instinct.  It  may  be  that 
every  child  inherits  a considerable  number  of  such  rudi- 
mentary instincts,  and  that  they  play  a considerable 
* **  Die  Seele  des  Kindes/’  5te  Auflage,  Leipzig,  igcx),  S.  i8o. 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES  107 


part  in  facilitating  the  acquisition  of  new  movements, 
especially  perhaps  of  speech-movements. 

We  shall  have  to  consider  in  later  chapters  the 
ways  in  which  these  three  forms  of  mental  interaction, 
sympathy,  suggestion,  and  imitation,  play  their  all- 
important  parts  in  the  moulding  of  the  individual 
by  his  social  environment,  and  in  the  life  of  societies 
generally. 

Play 

Another  tendency,  one  that  the  human  mind  has  in 
common  with  many  of  the  animals,  demands  brief  notice, 
namely,  the  tendency  to  play.  Play  also  is  sometimes 
ascribed  to  an  instinct ; but  no  one  of  the  many  varieties 
of  playful  activity  can  properly  be  ascribed  to  an  instinct 
of  play.  Nevertheless  play  must  be  reckoned  among 
the  native  tendencies  of  the  mind  of  high  social  value. 
Children  and  the  young  of  many  species  of  animal  take 
to  play  spontaneously  without  any  teaching  or  example. 
-Several  theories  of  play  have  been  put  forward,  each 
claiming  to  sum  up  the  phenomena  in  one  brief  formula. 
f)The  oldest  of  the  modern  theories  was  proposed  by  the 
poet  Schiller,  and  was  developed  by  Herbert  Spencer. 
According  to  this  view,  play  is  always  thej2XpressiQn_fl£ 
a surplus  oervauasngj'g.y-  The  young  creature,  being 
tended  and  fed  by  its  parents,  does  not  expend  its  energy 
upon  the  quest  of  food,  in  earning  its  daily  bread,  and 
therefore  has  a surplus  store  of  energy  which  overflows 
along  the  most  open  nervous  channels,  producing  pur- 
poseless movements  of  the  kind  that  are  most  frequent 
in  real  life.  There  is,  no  doubt,  an  element  of  truth  in 
the  theory,  but  it  is  clearly  inadequate  to  account  for 
the  facts,  even  in  the  case  of  the  simple  play  of  animals. 
It  does  not  sufficiently  account  for  the  forms  the  play 
activities  take ; still  less  is  it  compatible  with  the  fact 


io8 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


that  young  animals,  as  well  as  young  children,  will  often 
play  till  they  are  exhausted.  The  element  of  truth  is 
that  the  creature  is  most  disposed  to  play  when  it  is 
so  well  nourished  and  rested  that  it  has  a surplus  of 
stored  energy.  But  this  is  true  also  of  work. 

3-'y6thers,  looking  chiefly  at  the  play  of  children,  have 
regarded  their  play  as  a special  instance  of  the  operation 
of  the  law  of  recapitulation  : and  they  have  sought  to 
show  that  the  child  retraverses  in  his  play  the  successive 
culture  periods  of  human  history,  owing  to  the  successive 
development  or  ripening  of  native  tendencies  to  the  forms 
of  activity  supposed  to  have  been  characteristic  of  these 
periods.  This  recapitulatory  theory  of  play  and  the 
educational  practice  based  on  it  are  founded  on  the 
fallacious  belief  that,  as  the  human  race  traversed  the 
various  culture  periods,  its  native  mental  constitution 
acquired  very  special  tendencies,  and  that  each  period  of 
culture  was,  as  it  were,  the  expression  of  a certain  well- 
marked  stage  in  the  evolution  of  the  human  mind. 
This  view  can  hardly  be  accepted,  for  we  have  little  reason 
to  suppose  that  human  nature  has  undergone  any  such 
profound  modifications  in  the  course  of  the  development 
of  civilisation  out  of  barbarism  and  savagery. 

3}  Professor  Karl  Groos  ^ has  recently  propounded  a new 
theory  of  play.  He  sets  out  from  the  consideration  of 
the  play  of  young  animals, 
utility  to  them  of  play  as 
business  of  life,  as  a perfecting  by  practice  of  the  more 
specialised  and  difficult  kinds  of  activity  on  the  successful 
exercise  of  which  their  survival  in  the  struggle  for 
existence  must  depend.  Consider  the  case  of  the  kitten 
playing  with  a ball  on  the  floor.  It  is  clear  that,  in  the 
course  of  such  playing,  the  kitten  improves  its  skill  in 
movements  of  the  kind  that  will  be  needed  for  the 
* “The  Play  of  Animals"  and  “The  Play  of  Man.” 


and  he  points  out  the  obvious 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES  109 


catching  of  its  prey  when  it  is  thrown  upon  its  own 
resources.  Or  take  the  case  of  puppies  playfully  fight- 
ing with  one  another.  It  seems  clear  that  the  practice 
they  get  in  quick  attack  and  avoidance  must  make  them 
better  fighters  than  they  would  become  if  they  never 
played  in  this  way. 

Starting  out  from  considerations  of  this  sort,  Professor 
Groos  argues  that  the  occurrence  of  youthful  play  among 
almost  all  animals  that  in  mature  life  have  to  rely  upon 
rapid  and  varied  skilled  movem.ents  justifies  us  in 
believing  that  the  period  of  immaturity,  with  its  ten- 
dency to  playful  activities,  is  a special  adaptation  of 
the  course  of  individual  development,  an  adaptation  that 
enables  the  creature  to  become  better  fitted  to  cope  with 
its  environment  than  it  could  be  if  it  enjoyed  no  such 
period  of  play.  Groos  therefore  reverses  the  Schiller- 
Spencer  dictum,  and  says — it  is  not  that  young  animals 
play  because  they  are  young  and  have  surplus  nervous 
energy : we  must  believe  rather  that  the  higher  animals 
have  this  period  of  youthful  immaturity  in  order  that 
they  may  play.  The  youthful  play-tendencies  are,  then, 
according  to  this  view,  special  racial  endowments  of  high 
biological  utility,  the  products,  no  doubt,  of  the  operation 
of  natural  selection.  If  we  ask — In  what  does  this 
special  adaptation  consist  ? the  answer  is — it  consists 
in  the  tendency  for  the  various  instincts  (on  the  skilled 
exercise  of  which  adult  efficiency  depends)  to  ripen  and 
to  come  into  action  in  each  individual  of  the  species 
before  they  are  needed  for  serious  use.  We  have  other 
and  better  grounds  for  believing  that  the  time  of  ripening 
of  any  instinct  in  the  individuals  of  any  species  is  liable 
to  be  shifted  forwards  or  backwards  in  the  age-scale 
during  the  course  of  racial  evolution,  so  that  the  order 
of  their  ripening  and  of  the  appearance  of  the  various 
instinctive  activities  in  the  individual  does  not  conform 


no 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


to  the  law  of  recapitulation.  There  is,  therefore,  nothing 
improbable  in  this  view  that  play  is  determined  by  the 
premature  ripening  of  instincts.  But  it  will  not  fully 
account  for  all  the  facts  of  animal  play,  and  still  less  for 
all  forms  of  children’s  play.  There  remains  a difficulty 
of  a very  interesting  kind. 

Consider  the  case  of  young  dogs  playfully  fighting 
together.  If  we  simply  assume  that  this  is  the  ex- 
pression of  the  prematurely  ripened  pugnacious  instinct, 
we  ought  to  expect  to  find  the  young  dogs  really  fighting 
and  doing  their  best  to  hurt  one  another ; and,  since  anger 
is  the  affective  state  that  normally  accompanies  the 
exercise  of  this  instinct,  we  should  expect  to  observe 
every  symptom  of  anger  as  the  dogs  roll  about  together. 
But  it  is  perfectl)^  clear  that,  although  the  dogs  are 
capable  of  anger  on  other  occasions,  the}^  make  all  the 
movements  of  combat  without  anger  and  in  a peculiarly 
modified  manner ; one  seizes  the  other  by  the  throat 
and  pins  him  to  the  ground,  and  so  forth ; but  all  this 
is  done  in  such  a way  as  not  to  hurt  his  opponent ; the 
teeth  are  never  driven  home,  and  no  blood  is  drawn. 
That  they  do  no  hurt  to  one  another  is  by  no  means 
due  to  lack  of  muscular  power  or  of  sharp  teeth  ; nor  is 
there  any  lack  of  energy  in  the  movements  in  general ; 
in  merely  chasing  one  another  the  utmost  exertions  are 
made.  This  peculiar  modification  of  the  combative 
movements  seems  to  be  an  essential  character  of  the 
playful  fighting  of  many  young  animals,  and  boys  are 
no  exception  to  the  rule.  How  is  it  to  be  accounted 
for  and  reconciled  with  Professor  Groos’s  theory  of  play? 
^Ir.  F.  H.  Bradley  has  made  a suggestion  in  answer 
to  this  question.^  He  takes  the  case  of  the  playful 
biting  of  young  dogs  as  typical  of  play,  and  points  out 
that,  not  only  in  this  case  but  in  many  others  also,  a cer- 


* **  Mind,”  N.S.,  vol.  xv.,  p.  468. 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES  in 


tain  restraint  of  action  is  manifested  in  play ; and  he  pro- 
poses to  regard  a certain  degree  of  self-restraint  as  the 
psychological  characteristic  of  play.  He  takes  the  view 
that,  when  the  dog  bites  your  hand  in  play,  he  knows  he 
must  not  exert  so  much  force  as  to  hurt  you  ; “ there  is 
restraint,  a restraint  which  later  may  be  formulated  as 
the  rule  of  the  game.”  Mr.  Bradley  here  seems  to 
ascribe  to  the  playfully  biting  dog  a certain  deliberate 
self-restraint.  I think  that  in  doing  so  he  greatly  over- 
estimates the  complexity  of  the  creature’s  mental 
process,  and  ascribes  to  it  a degree  of  self-consciousness 
and  a power  of  intelligent  control  of  conduct  of  which  it 
is  really  quite  incapable.  We  might  find  a parallel  to 
the  psychological  situation  in  which  Bradley  supposes 
the  dog  to  be,  in  the  case  of  a boy  who,  fighting  with 
another  in  real  earnest,  is  aware  that,  if  he  should  do  the 
other  more  than  a slight  hurt,  he  will  bring  punishment 
upon  himself,  and  who  therefore  exerts  a strong  control 
over  his  actions  and  hits  his  opponent  only  in  places 
where  no  great  harm  can  be  done.  To  suppose  that  the 
mental  process  of  the  young  dog  at  all  approaches  this 
degree  of  complexity  is,  I think,  quite  impossible.  And 
that  this  view  is  untenable  is  shown  also  by  the  fact 
that  young  dogs  display  this  playful  fighting  and  its 
characteristic  restraint  of  movement  at  a very  early  age, 
when  they  can  hardly  have  learnt  self-restraint  from 
experience  of  the  ill  consequences  of  biting  too  hard. 
lit  is  not  that  the  young  dog,  when  playfully  fighting, 
has  the  impulse  to  bite  with  all  his  force  and  that  he 
keeps  a strong  volitional  control  over  his  movements  ; 
we  must  rather  suppose,  since  the  movements  he  makes 
are  in  all  other  respects  like  those  of  real  combat,  that 
the  instinct  of  which  they  are  the  expression  is  a 
peculiarly  modified  form  of  the  combative  instinct. 

I The  movements,  with  their  characteristic  differences 


II2 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


from  those  of  actual  combat,  must  be  regarded  as  in- 
stinctive. but  as  due  to  the  excitement  of  some  modified 
form  of  the  combative  instinct,  an  instinct  differentiated 
from,  and  having  an  independent  existence  alongside,  the 
original  instinct.  And  that  the  movements  are  not  the 
expression  of  the  true  combative  instinct  is  shown  also 
by  the  fact  that  the  specific  affective  state,  namely 
anger,  which  normally  accompanies  its  excitement,  is 
lacking  in  playful  activity.  Professor  Groos’s  theory 
that  play  is  due  to  the  premature  ripening  of  instincts 
needs,  then,  to  be  modified  by  the  recognition  of  some 
special  differentiation  of  the  instincts  which  find  expres- 
sion in  playful  activity. 

It  is  obvious  that  Groos’s  theory  is  applicable  to  some 
of  the  plays  of  children,  especially  the  warlike  and 
hunting  games  of  boys  and  the  doll-playing  of  girls. 
But  there  are  other  forms  of  childish  play  which  cannot 
be  accounted  for  in  this  way  and  which  are  not  the 
direct  expressions  of  instincts.  /The  motives  of  play  are 
various  and  often  complex,  and  they  cannot  be  charac- 
terised in  any  brief  formula ; nor  can  any  hard-and-fast 
line  be  drawn  between  work  and  play,  /feeside  the  class 
of  plays  to  which  Professor  Groos’s  formula  is  applic- 
able we  may  recognise  several  principal  classes  of 
play  motives — such  are  the  desire  of  increased  skill, 
the  pleasure  of  make-believe,  the  pleasure  in  being 
|a  cause./^ut  a motive  that  may  co-operate  with  others 
in  almost  all  games,  and  which  among  ourselves  is 
seldom  altogether  lacking,  is  the  desire  to  get  the  better 
of  others,  to  emulate,  to  excel.  This  motive  plays  an 
important  part,  not  only  in  games,  but  in  many  of  the 
most  serious  activities  of  life,  to  which  it  gives  an 
additional  zest.  For  many  a politician  it  is  a principal 
motive,  and  many  a professional  and  many  a com- 
mercial man  continues  his  exertions,  under  the  driving 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES  113 


power  of  this  motive,  long  after  the  immediate  practical 
ends  of  his  professional  activity  have  been  achieved  ; 
and  in  the  collective  life  of  societies  it  plays  no  small 
part  But,  wherever  it  enters  in,  it  is  recognised  that  it 
imparts  something  of  a playful  character  to  the  activity  ; 
a recognition  which  often  finds  expression  in  the  phrase 
‘‘playing  the  game”  applied  to  activities  of  the  most 
diverse  and  serious  kinds. 

Whence  comes  this  strong  desire  and  impulse  to 
surpass  our  rivals  ? v)We  saw  reason  for  refusing  to 
accept  a specific  instinct  of  rivalry  or  emulation  in  the 
animals,  for  rivalry  and  emulation  imply  self-conscious- 
ness. 5llt  is  a defensible  view  that  the  impulse  of  rivalry 
derives  from  the  instinct  of  self-assertion ; but,  though 
it  is  probably  complicated  and  reinforced  in  many 
cases  by  the  co-pperation_  of_.this  impulse,  it  can  hardly 
be  wholly  identified  with  it.  VNor  can  it  be  identified 
with  the  combative  impulse ; for  this  too  seems  to  per- 
sist in  the  most  highly  civilised  peoples  with  all  its 
fierce  strength  and  its  specific  brutal  tendency  to 
destroy  the  opponent.  i^The  obscurity  of  the  subject 
and  the  importance  of  this  impulse  of  rivalry  in  the  life 
of  societies  tempt  me  to  offer  a speculation ^as  to  its 
nature  and  origin  that  is  suggested  by  the  issue  of  our 
discussion  of  the  playful  fighting  of  young  animalsj^^ 

The  impulse  of  rivalry  is  to  get  the  better  of  an 
opponent  in  some  sort  of  struggle ; but  it  differs  from 
the  combative  impulse  in  that  it  does  not  prompt  to,  and 
does  not  find  satisfaction  in,  the  destruction  of  the 
opponent.  Rather,  the  continued  existence  of  the  rival, 
as  such,  but  as  a conjg^uered  riy^^  seems  necessary  for 
its  full  satisfaction  ; and  a beneyolent  cor^^^ 
towards  the  conquered  rival  is  not  incompatible  with 
the  activity  of  the  impulse,  as  it  is  with  that  of  the 
combative  impulse.  Now,  these  peculiarities  of  the 

I 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


1 14 


impulse  of  rivalry,  when  stripped  of  all  intellectual 
complications,  seem  to  be  just  those  of  the  modified 
form  of  the  combative  impulse  that  seems  to  underlie 
the  playful  fighting  of  young  animals.  <J^iiIay  it  not  be, 
then,  that  the  impulse  of  rivalry  is  essentially  this  impulse 
to  playful  fighting,  the  impulse  of  an  instinct  differen- 
tiated from  the  combative  instinct  in  the  first  instance 
in  the  animal  world  to  secure  practice  in  the  move- 
ments of  combat  ?£^)In  favour  of  this  view  it  may  be 
pointed  out  that  in  the  human  race  the  native  strength 
of  the  impulse  of  rivalry  seems  On  the  whole  to  run 
parallel  with,  or  to  be  closely  correlated  with,  the  strength 
of  the  pugnacious  instinct.  The  impulse  of  rivalry  is 
very  strong  in  the  peoples  of  Europe,  especially,  perhaps, 
in  the  English  people ; it  constitutes  the  principal 
motive  to  almost  all  our  many  games,  and  it  lends 
its  strength  to  the  support  of  almost  every  form  of 
activity.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  we  are  a highly 
pugnacious  people  or  that  our  Anglo-Saxon  and  Danish 
and  Norman  ancestors  were  probably  the  most  terrible 
fighting-men  the  world  has  ever  seen.  On  the  other  hand, 
men  of  the  unwarlike  races,  e.g.,  the  mild  Hindoo  or  the 
Burman,  seem  relatively  free  from  the  impulse  of  rivalry. 
To  men  of  these  races  such  games  as  football  seem 
utterly  absurd  and  irrational,  and,  in  fact,  they  are 
absurd  and  irrational  for  all  men  born  without  the 
impulse  of  rivalry ; whereas  men  of  warlike  races,  eg.y 
the  Maoris,  who,  like  our  ancestors,  found  for  many 
generations  their  chief  occupation  and  delight  in  war- 
fare, take  up  such  games  keenly  and  even  learn  very 
quickly  to  beat  us  at  them. 

I think  we  may  even  observe  in  young  boys  the 
recapitulation  of  the  process  of  differentiation  of  the 
impulse  of  rivalry  from  the  combative  instinct.  The 
latter  usually  comes  into  play  at  a very  early  age, 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES  115 


but  the  former  does  not  usually  manifest  itself  until 
the  age  of  four  or  five  years.  Up  to  this  time  the  more 
active  playing  of  boys  is  apt  to  be  formless  and  vague, 
a mere  running  about  and  shouting,  a form  of  play 
sufficiently  accounted  for  by  the  Schiller-Spencer  theory. 
But  then  the  impulse  of  rivalry  begins  to  work,  and  from 
that  time  it  may  dominate  the  boy’s  life  more  and 
more,  in  so  far  as  his  activities  are  spontaneous.  In 
this  connection  it  is  important  to  note  that  the  growth 
of  self-consciousness  must  favour  and  strengthen  the 
operation  of  this  impulse,  whereas  it  is  rather  adverse 
to  the  display  of  most  of  the  other  instinctive  activities 
in  their  crude  forms.* 

A universal  tendency  of  the  mind,  which  is  so  familiar 
as  to  run  some  risk  of  being  neglected,  must  be  briefly 
mentioned ; namely,  the  tendency  for  every  process 
to  be  repeated  more  readily  in  virtue  of  its  previous 
occurrence  and  in  proportion  to  the  frequency  of  its 

■ While  living  among  the  hybrid  Papuan-Melanesian  people  of 
a small  group  of  islands  in  the  Torres  Straits,  I was  much  struck 
by  the  marked  weakness  of  the  impulse  of  rivalry  among  them. 
Though  adults  and  children  spent  a large  proportion  of  their 
time  in  playing,  the  spirit  of  rivalry  was  displayed  but  feebly 
in  a few  of  the  games  and  hardly  at  all  in  most  of  their  playing. 
I failed  completely  to  get  the  boys  to  take  up  various  English 
games,  and  the  failure  seemed  due  to  the  lack  of  the  impulse  of 
rivalry.  The  same  defect  or  peculiarity  seemed  to  be  respon- 
sible for  the  fact  that  the  people  were  so  content  with  their 
equality  in  poverty  that,  although  opportunities  for  earning  high 
wages  in  adjacent  islands  were  abundant,  few  could  be  induced 
to  avail  themselves  of  them,  or  to  work  for  more  than  a few 
months,  if  they  did  so.  These  people  are  unwarlike,  and  the 
men  and  boys  never  fight  with  one  another — a striking  fact, 
which  certainly  is  not  to  be  explained  by  excellence  of  the  social 
system  or  refinement  of  manners ; for  but  a generation  ago  these 
people  were  notorious  for  having  devoured  the  crews  of  several 
vessels  wrecked  upon  the  islands. 


ii6 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


previous  repetitions.  The  formulation  of  this  tendency 
may  be  named  the  law  of  habit,  if  the  word  “ habit  ” is 
understood  in  the  widest  possible  sense.  In  virtue  of 
this  tendency  the  familiar  as  such  is  preferred  to  the 
less  familiar,  the  habitual  and  routine  mode  of  action 
and  reaction,  in  all  departments  of  mental  life,  to  any 
mode  of  action  necessitating  any  degree  of  novel  adjust- 
ment. And  the  more  familiar  and  habitual  is  any 
mental  process  or  mode  of  action  in  a situation  of  a 
given  type,  the  more  difficult  is  it  to  make  any  change 
or  improvement  in  it  and  the  more  painful  is  any  change 
of  the  character  of  the  situation  that  necessitates  an 
effort  of  readjustment. /^This  is  the  great  principle  by 
which  all  acquisitions  of  the  individual  mind  are  pre- 
served and  in  virtue  of  which  the  making  of  further 
acquisitions  is  rendered  more  difficult,  through  which  the 
indefinite  plasticity  of  the  infant’s  mind  gradually  gives 
place  to  the  elasticity  of  the  mature  mind. 


Temperament 

In  order  to  complete  this  brief  sketch  of  the  more 
important  features  of  the  native  mental  constitution,  a 
few  words  must  be  said  about  temperament.  This  is  a 
very  difficult  subject  which  most  psychologists  are  glad 
to  leave  alone.  Yet  temperament  is  the  source  of 
many  of  the  most  striking  mental  differences  between 
individuals  and  peoples. 

Under  the  head  of  temperamental  factors  we  group 
a number  of  natively  given  constitutional  conditions  of 
our  mental  life  that  exert  a constant  influence  on  our 
mental  processes.  This  influence  may  be  slight  at  any 
one  time,  but  since  its  effects  are  cumulative — i.e„  since 
it  operates  as  a constant  bias  in  one  direction  during 
mental  development  and  the  formation  of  habits — it  is 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES  117 


responsible  for  much  in  the  mental  make-up  of  the 
adult.  Temperament  is,  as  the  ancients  clearly  saw, 
largely  a matter  of  bodily  constitution  ; that  is  to  say  that 
among  the  temperamental  factors  the  influences  on  the 
mental  life  exerted  by  the  great  bodily  organs  occupy  a 
prominent  place.  But  there  are  other  factors  also, 
and  it  is  impossible  to  bring  them  all  under  one  brief 
formula ; and,  since  temperament  is  the  resultant  of 
these  many  relatively  independent  factors,  it  is  im- 
possible to  distinguish  any  clearly  defined  classes  of 
temperaments,  as  the  ancients,  as  well  as  many  modern 
authors,  have  attempted  to  do.  Some  of  the  best 
rnodern  psychologists  have  been  led  into  absurdities 
by  attempting  this  impossible  task.  The  truth  is 
that  we  are  only  just  beginning  to  gain  some  slight 
insight  into  the  conditions  of  temperament,  and  pro- 
gress in  this  respect  must  depend  chiefly  upon  the 
progress  of  physiology. /in  one  respect  only  can  we 
make  a decided  advance  upon  the  ancients — we  can 
realise  the  great  complexity  of  the  problem  and  can 
frankly  admit  our  ignorance. 

The  te n^er anx^ntal ^ Jfactarg  may  conveniently  be 
grouped  in  two  principal  classes — on  the  one  hand, 
the  influences  exerted  on  the  nervous  system  and, 
through  it,  on  mental  process  by  the  functioning  of 
the  bodily  organs ; on  the  other  hand,  general  func- 


best  grasp  something  of  the  nature  of  the  former 
class  by  the  observation  of  cases  in  which  their  in- 
fluence is  abnormally  great.  Of  recent  years  some 
light  has  been  thrown  upon  temperament  by  the  dis- 
covery of  the  great  influence  exerted  on  mental  life 
by  certain  organs  whose  functions  had  been,  and  in 
many  respects  still  are,  obscure.  The  most  notable 
example  is  perhaps  the  thyroid  body,  a small  mass 


tional  peculiarities  of  the  nervous 


ii8 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


of  soft  cellular  tissue  in  the  neck.  We  know  now 
that  defect  of  the  functions  of  this  organ  may  reduce 
any  one  of  us  to  a state  of  mental  apathy  bordering 
on  idiocy,  and  that  its  excessive  activity  produces 
the  opposite  effect  and  may  throw  the  mind  into 
an  over-excitable  condition  verging  on  maniacal  ex- 
citement. Again,  we  know  that  certain  diseases  tend  to 
produce  specific  changes  of  temperament,  that  phthisis 
often  gives  it  a bright  and  hopeful  turn,  diabetes  a 
dissatisfied  and  cantankerous  turn.  It  is  clear  that, 
in  some  such  cases  of  profound  alteration  of  tempera- 
ment by  bodily  disorder,  the  effects  are  produced  by 
means  of  the  chemical  products  of  metabolism,  which, 
being  thrown  out  of  the  disordered  tissues  into  the 
blood  and  reaching  the  nervous  system  by  way  of  the 
blood-stream,  chemically  modify  its  processes.  It  is 
""probable  that  every  organ  in  the  body  exerts  in  this 
indirect  way  some  influence  upon  our  mental  life,  and 
that  temperament  is  in  large  measure  the  balance  or 
resultant  of  all  these  many  contributory  chemical 
influences. 

£ ) Most  of  the  bodily  organs  probably  co-operate  in 
determining  temperament  in  another  way  hardly  less 
important.  All  of  them  are  supplied  with  afferent  nerves, 
nerves  that  constantly  ca^j  impulses  up  from  the 
organs  to  the  central  nervous  system.  And  all  these 
impulses  probably  mod^_2ll-^^^- 
workjng  of  the  nervous  system  and  play  some  part 
in  determining  the  ‘‘ coenaesthesia,”  the  obscure  back- 
ground of  consciousness  on  which  the  general  tone  of 
our  mental  life  chiefly  depends.  i>^he  organs  of  repro- 
duction afford  the  most  striking  example  of  this  kind  of 
temperamental  influence>'  m he  skeletal  system  of  muscles 
also  probably  exerts  a great  influence  of  this  kind — a 
well-developed  and  active  muscular  system  tends  to 


GENERAL  INNATE  TENDENCIES  119 


maintain  a certain  tone  of  the  nervous  system  that 
[favours  an  alert  and  confident  habit  of  mind.  Perfect 
functioning  of  all  the  bodily  organs  not  only  favours 
jin  this  way  mental  activity  in  general,  but  tends  to  an 
’objective  habit  of  mind  ; whereas  imperfection  of  organic  I 
j functions  tends  to  produce  an  undue  prominence  in 
I consciousness  of  the  bodily  self  and,  therefore,  an 
introspective  and  brooding  habit  of  mind. 

^ As  regards  the  part  played  by  the  general  consti- 
tution of  the  nervous  system  itself  in  determining 
temperament,  we  are  still  more  ignorant  than  in  regard 
to  the  influence  of  the  bodily  organs.  A few  characters 
of  the  nervous  tissues  we  can  point  to  with  confidence 
as  determining  differences  of  temperament.  Such  are 
native  differences  of  excitability,  of  rapidity  of  response 
and  transmission  of  the  nervous  impulse,  and  differences 
in  respect  to  fatigability  and  rapidity  of  recuperation. 
'iBut  there  are  probably  other  subtle  differences  of  which 
we  know  nothing. 

^ Temperament,  then,  is  a complex  resultant  of  many 
[factors  each  of  which  is  in  the  main  natively  determined, 
and,  though  they  are  alterable  perhaps  by  disease  and 
jthe  influence  of  the  physical  environment,  especially  by 
(temperature  and  food,  they  are  but  little  capable  of 
being  modified  by  voluntary  effort ; and  the  mental 
I development  of  individuals  is,  as  it  were,  constantly 
(biassed  in  this  or  that  direction  by  peculiarities  of 
temperament,  the  selective  activity  of  the  mind  is  given 
I this  or  that  trend  ; the  child  natively  endowed  with 
a cheerful  temperament  will  be  receptive  to  bright 
, influences,  his  thoughts  will  tend  to  dwell  on  the  future 
j in  pleased  anticipation,  optimistic  ideas  will  readily  find 
a foothold  in  his  mind,  while  gloomy,  pessimistic  ideas 
j will  gain  no  permanent  influence  over  him  in  spite  of 
( being  intellectually  grasped.  And  with  the  child  of 


120 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


I gloomy  temperament  all  this  will  be  reversed.  In  this 
!way  temperament  largely  determines  our  outlook  on 
life,  our  cast  of  thought  and  lines  of  action. 

/ Temperament  must  be  carefully  distinguished  from 
disposition  and  from  character,  though  these  distinctions 
are  not  always  observed  by  popular  speech  and  thought. 
The  disposition  of  a person  is  the  sum  of  all  the 
I innate  dispositions  or  instincts  with  their  specific  im- 
' pulses  or  tendencies  of  the  kind  discussed  in  Chapter  II. 

' Differences  of  disposition  are  due  to  native  differences 
[in  the  strengths  of  the  impulses  of  the  instincts,  or  to 
(differences  in  their  strengths  induced  by  use  and  disuse 
in  the  course  of  individual  development,  or  more  rarely 
,to  absence  of  one  or  other  of  the  instincts.  Thus  we 
properly  speak  of  an  irascible,  or  tender,  or  timid  dis- 
I position  ; not  of  irascible,  tender,  or  timid  temperament. 

! Character,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  sum  of  acquired 
tendencies  built  up  on  the  native  basis  of  disposition 

iand  temperament ; it  includes  our  sentiments  and  our 
habits  in  the  widest  sense  of  the  term,  and  is  the 
product  of  the  interaction  of  disposition  and  tempera- 
ment with  the  physical  and  s^ial  environment  under 
the  guidance  of  intelligence.-<^Thus  a man’s  tempera- 
ment and  disposition  are  in  the  main  born  with  him 
and  are  but  little  alterable  by  any  effort  he  may  make, 
I whereas  character  is  made  largely  by  his  own  efforts. 


CHAPTER  V 


THE  NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  AND  THE 
CONSTITUTION  OF  SOME  OF  THE  COMPLEX 
EMOTIONS. 

WE  seldom  experience  the  primary  emotions  dis- 
cussed in  Chapter  III.  in  the  pure  or  unmixed 
forms  in  which  they  are  commonly  manifested  by  the 
animals.  ✓^ur„einotional  states  conimQn_ly  arise  from 
th^^inriultaneoiLS . excitem  two _or„  mpxe,  of_the 

insdnctjye  dispos,  and  the  majority  of  the  names 

currently  used  to  denote  our  various  emotions  are  the 
names  of  such  mixed,  secondary,  or  complex  emotions. 
That  the  great  variety  of  our  emotional  states  may  be 
properly  regarded  as  the  result  of  the  conripojiading  of  a 
relatively  small  number  of  primary  or  simple  emotions 
is  no  new  discovery.  Descartes,  for  example,  recognised 
only  six  primary  emotions,  or  passions  as  he  termed 
them,  namely — admiration,  love,  hatred,  desire,  joy,  and 
sadness,  and  he  wrote,  “ All  the  others  are  composed  of 
some  out  of  these  six  and  derived  from  them.”  He 
does  not  seem  to  have  formulated  any  principles  for  the 
determination  of  the  primaries  and  the  distinction  of 
them  from  the  secondaries. 

The  compounding  of  the  primary  emotions  is  largely, 
though  not  wholly,  due  to  the  existence  of  sentiments, 
and  some  of  the  complex  emotional  processes  can  only 
be  generated  from  sentiments.  Before  going  on  to  discuss 
the  complex  emotions,  we  must  therefore  try  to  under- 
stand as  clearly  as  possible  the  nature  of  a sentiment. 

X21 


122 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


The  word  “sgniyxjgijf  ” is  still  used  in  several  different 
senses.  M.  Ribot  and  other  French  authors  use  its 
French  equivalent  as  covering  all  the  feelings  and 
emotions,  as  the  most  general  name  for  the  affective 
aspect  of  mental  processes.  We  owe  to  Mr.  A.  F.  Shand  * 
the  recognition  of  features  of  our  mental  constitution  of 
a most  important  kind  that  have  been  strangely  over- 
looked by  other  psychologists,  and  the  application  of  the 
j word  “sentiments”  to  denote  features  of  this  kind.  Mr. 
\ Shand  points  out  that  our  emotions,  or,  more  strictly 
) speaking,  cujr_xmQjdaoaJ„dispfisMQn§^  Jmi_jQ__b 

organised  in systems  about  the  various  objects  and 

classes  of  objects  that  excite  them.  Such  an  organised 
system  of  emotional  tendencies  is  not  a fact  or  mode  of 
\ experience,  but  is  a feature  of  the  complexly  organised 
I structure  of  the  mind  that  underlies  all  our  mental 
acfi vity . To  such  an . organised,  system  of  emotional 

j teadenciei  centred  about  some  object Mr.  Shand 

proposes  to  apply  the  name  “sentiment.”  This  applica- 
tion of  the  word  is  in  fair  accordance  with  its  usage  in 
popular  speech,  and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  it  will 
rapidly  be  adopted  by  psychologists. 

/The  conception  of  a sentiment,  as  defined  by  Mr. 
Shand,  enables  us  at  once  to  reduce  to  order  many  of 
the  facts  of  the  life  of  impulse  and  emotion,  a province 
of  psychology  which  hitherto  has  been  chaotic  and 
obscure.  That,  in  spite  of  the  great  amount  of  dis- 
cussion of  the  affective  life  in  recent  centuries,  it  should 
have  been  reserved  for  a contemporary  writer  to  make 
this  very  important  discovery  is  an  astonishing  fact,  so 
obvious  and  so  necessary  does  the  conception  seem 
when  once  it  has  been  grasped.  The  failure  of  earlier 
writers  to  arrive  at  the  conception  must  be  attributed 

• “ Character  and  the  Emotions,”  Mind,  N.S.,  vol.  v.,  and  “ M. 
Ribot’s  Theory  of  the  Passions,”  Mind,  N.S.,  vol.  xvi. 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  123 


to  the  long  prevalence  of  the  narrow  and  paralysing 
doctrine  according  to  which  the  task  of  the  psychologist 
is  merely  to  observe,  analyse,  and  describe  the  content 
of  his  own  consciousness. 

The  typical  sentiments  are  love  and  hate,  and  it  will 
suffice  for  our  present  purpose  if  we  briefly  consider  the 
nature  and  mode  of  formation  of  these  two.  '^ow,  it  is 
a source  of  great  confusion  that,  sentiments  never  having 
been  clearly  distinguished  from  the  emotions  until  Mr. 
Shand  performed  this  great  service  to  psychology,  the 
words  love  and  hate  have  been  used  to  denote  both 
emotions  and  sentiments.  Thus  the  disposition  of  the 
priiimry  ejnptipn  we^  have,  disc^usse^  under  the  name  of 
“■tender^emodonl^js  anj^e^  the  system 

of  emotional  dispositions  that  constitutes  the  sentiment 
^^oye;  and  the  name  ‘‘love^’  is  often  applied  both  to  this 
emotion  and  to  the  sentiment.  In  a similar  way  the  word 
“hate”  is  commonly  applied  to  a complex  emotion  com- 
pounded of  anger  and  fear  and  disgust,  as  well  as  to  the 
sentiment  which  comprises  the  dispositions^to  these 
emotions  as  its  most  essential  constituents.  But  it  is 
clear  that  on£-niay^properly„hLa.saM^to  love,  or^to  hate 
a man  at  the  times  when  he  is  not  at  all  present  to 
one’s  thought  and  when  one  is  experiencing  no  emotion 
oUany  kind.  What  is  meant  by  saying  that  a man 
kpwes  or  hates  another  is  that  he  is  liable  to  experience 
a pf  emotions  and  feelings  on 

contemplating  that  other,  the  nature  of  the  emotion 
depending  upon  the  situation  of  the  other : that  is  to  say, 
common  speech  recognises  that  love  and  hate  are,  not 
merely  emotions,  burtenduring  tendencies  to  experience 
Cfiitam  ^i)tions  whenever  the  loved  or  hated  object 
comes  to  mind  therefore,  in  refusing  to  apply  the 
names  “ love  ” and  “ hate  ” to  any  of  the  emotions  and  in 
restricting  them  to  these  enduring  complex  dispositions 


124 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


which  are  the  sentiments,  no  more  violence  is  done  to 
language  than  is  absolutely  necessary  for  the  avoidance 
of  the  confusion  that  has  hitherto  prevailed.  It  must  be 
noted  that  the  sentiments  of  love  and  hate  comprise 
many  of  the  same  emotional  dispositions ; but  the 
situations  of  the  object  of  the  sentiment  that  evoke  the 
same  emotions  are  very  different  and  in  the  main  of 


points  out,  when  a man  has  acquired  the  sentiment  of 
love  for  a person  or  other  object,  he  is  apt  to  experience 
tender  emotion  in  its  presence,  fear  or  anxiety  when 
it  is  in  danger,  anger  when  it  is  threatened,  sorrow 
when  it  is  lost,  joy  when  the  object  prospers  or  is 
restored' to  him,  gratitude  towards  him  who  does  good 
to  it,  and  so  on ; and,  when  he  hates  a person,  he 
experiences  fear  or  anger  or  both  on  his  approach, 
joy  when  that  other  is  injured,  anger  when  he  receives 
favours. 

It  is  going  too  far  to  say,  as  Shand  does,  that  with 
inversion  of  the  circumstances  of  the  object  all  the 
emotions  called  forth  by  the  loved  object  are  repeated 
in  relation  to  the  hated  object ; for  the  characteristic 
and  most  essential  emotion  of  the  sentiment  of  love 
is  tender  emotion,  and  this  is  not  evoked  by  any 
situation  of  the  hated  object;  its  disposition  has  no 
place  in  the  sentiment  of  hate.  It  is  clear,  nevertheless, 
that  the  objects  of  these  two  very  different  sentiments 
may  arouse  many  of  the  same  emotions,  and  that  the 
two  sentiments  comprise  emotional  dispositions  that 
are  in  part  identical,  or,  in  other  words,  that  some  of 
the  emotional  dispositions,  or  central  nuclei  of  the 
instincts,  are  members  of  sentiments  of  both  kinds. 
It  is,  I think,  helpful,  at  least  to  those  who  make  use 
of  visual  imagery,  to  attempt  to  picture  a sentiment  as 
a nervous  disposition  and  to  schematise  it  crudely  by  the 


opposite  character 


Shand 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  125 


aid  of  a diagram.  Let  us  draw  a number  of  circles 
lying  in  a row,  and  let  each  circle  stand  for  one  of 
the  primary  emotional  dispositions.  We  are  to  suppose 
that  the  excitement  of  each  one  of  these  is  accompanied 
by  the  corresponding  emotion  with  its  specific  impulse. 
These  dispositions  must  be  regarded  as  natively  inde- 
pendent of  one  another,  or  unconnected.  Let  A be 
the  object  of  a sentiment  of  hate  and  B be  the  object 
of  a sentiment  of  love ; and  let  a in  our  diagram  stand 


Diagram  to  illustrate  the  neural  bases  of  the  sentiments  of  hate  and  love. 
A is  the  object  of  the  sentiment  of  hate,  B that  of  the  sentiment  of 
love  ; a and  (3  are  the  neural  dispositions  whose  excitement  accom- 
panies presentations  or  ideas  of  A and  B respectively ; a is  connected 
with  the  affective-conative  dispositions  R,  F,  P,  C,  S and  /3  with 
T,  A,  S,  C,  P,  F,  with  degrees  of  intimacy  indicated  by  the  thick- 
nessesjof  the  connecting  lines.  The  letters  of  the  lower  row  stand 
for  the  names  of  the  instincts,  as  follows  : — R = Repulsion,  F= Fear, 
P = Pugnacity,  C = Curiosity,  S = Subjection,  A 5=  Self-assertion, 
T = Parental  instinct. 

for  the  complex  neural  disposition  whose  excitement 
underlies  the  idea  or  presentation  of  A,  and  let  /3  be 
the  corresponding  disposition  concerned  in  the  pre- 
sentation of  B.  Then  we  must  suppose  that  a becomes 
intimately  connected  with  R,  F,  and  P,  the  central 
nuclei  of  the  instincts  of  repulsion,  fear,  and  pugnacity, 
and  less  intimately  with  C and  S,  those  of  curiosity  and 
of  submission,  but  not  at  all  with  T,  the  central  nucleus 


126 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


of  the  tender  or  parental  instinct.  Whenever,  then,  d 
comes  into  play  (t.e.,  ■whenever  the  idea  of  A rises  to 
consciousness)  its  excitement  tends  to  spread  at  once 
to  all  these  dispositions;  and  we  must  suppose  that 
they  are  thrown  into  a condition  of  sub-excitement 
which  very  easily  rises  to  discharging  point  in  any 
one  of  them,  or  in  several  together — £.£■.,  in  P and  R, 
when  the  emotional  state  of  the  subject  becomes  one 
of  mingled  anger  and  disgust,  and  the  impulses  of 
these  two  emotions  determine  his  actions,  attitudes, 
and  expressions.  Similarly  j3  must  be  supposed  to 
be  connected  most  intimately  with  T,  the  disposition 
of  the  tender  emotion,  and  less  intimately  with  A,  S, 
C,  P,  and  F,  and  not  at  all  with  R.  If  this  diagram 
represents  the  facts,  however  crudely  and  inadequately, 
we  may  say  that  the  structural  basis  of  the  sentiment 
is  a system  of  nerve-paths  by  means  of  which  the 
disposition  of  the  idea  of  the  object  of  the  sentiment 
is  functionally  connected  with  several  emotional  disposi- 
tions. The  idea,  taken  in  the  usual  sense  of  the  word 
as  something  that  is  stored  in  the  mind,  may  therefore 
be  said  to  be  the  essential  nucleus  of  the  sentiment, 
without  which  it  cannot  exist,  and  through  the  medium 
of  which  several  emotional  dispositions  are  connected 
together  to  form  a functional  system.  The  emotional 
dispositions  comprised  within  the  system  of  any  sen- 
timent are,  then,  not  directly  connected  together;  and, 
in  accordance  with  the  law  of  forward  conduction,  the  ex- 
citement of  any  one  of  them  will  not  spread  backwards 
to  the  cognitive  dispositions,  but  only  in  the  efferent 
direction,  as  indicated  by  the  arrows  in  the  diagram. 
Hence  any  one  such  disposition  may  become  an  organic 
constituent  of  an  indefinitely  large  number  of  sentiments. 

The  process  by  which  such  a complex  psycho-physical 
disposition  or  system  of  dispositions  is  built  up  may  be 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  127 


supposed  to  be  essentially  that  process  (discussed  in 
Chapter  II.)  by  which  an  instinctive  disposition  becomes 
capable  of  being  directly  excited  by  other  objects  than 
its  natively  given  objects,  working  in  conjunction  with 
the  law  of  habit.  The  oftener  the  object  of  the  senti- 
ment becomes  the  object  of  any  one  of  the  emotions 
comprised  in  the  system  of  the  sentiment,  the  more 
readily  will  it  evoke  that  emotion  again,  because,  in 
accordance  with  the  law  of  habit,  the  connexions  of 
the  psycho-physical  dispositions  become  more  intimate 
the  more  frequently  they  are  brought  into  operation. 

/ After  this  brief  exposition,  and  this  attempt  at  a 
physiological  interpretation,  of  Mr.  Shand’s  doctrine 
of  the  sentiment,  we  may  pass  on  to  consider  some 
of  the  complex  emotions,  and  to  attempt  to  exhibit 
them  as  fusions  of  the  primary  emotions  we  have  dis- 
tinguished. If  we  find  that  most  of  the  complex 
emotions  can  be  satisfactorily  displayed  as  fusions 
lof  some  two,  or  more,  of  the  primary  emotions  we 
(have  distinguished,  together  with  feelings  of  pleasure 
and  pain,  excitement  and  relaxation,  this  will  be 
igood  evidence  that  the  emotions  we  have  designated 
as  the  primaries  are  truly  primary,  and  it  will  confirm 
'the  principle  by  which  we  were  guided  in  the  choice 
of  these  primaries,  the  principle,  namely,  that  each 
primary  emotion  accompanies  the  excitement  of  one 
of  the  instincts,  and  is  the  affective  aspect  of  a 
simple  instinctive  mental  process. 

Since  the  primary  emotions  may  be  combined  in  a 
large  number  of  different  ways,  and  since  the  primaries 
that  enter  into  the  composition  of  a secondary  emotion 
I may  be  present  in  many  different  degrees  of  intensity, 
the  whole  range  of  complex  emotions  presents  an 
indefinitely  large  number  of  qualities  that  shade  im- 
perceptibly into  one  another  without  sharp  dividing 


128 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


lines.  The  names  provided  by  common  speech 
designate  merely  a certain  limited  number  of  the 
most  prominent  of  these  complexes. 

In  seeking  to  analyse  the  complex  emotions  we 
must  rely  largely  on  the  method  recommended  by 
..Mr.  Shand — we  must,  that  is  to  say,  observe  the 
/conative  tendencies  of  the  emotions,  the  nature  of  the 
actions  to  which  they  impel  us.  For  every  emotion, 
no  matter  how  complex  it  may  be,  has  its  characteristic 
conjunction  of  motor  tendencies,  which  together  give 
rise  to  the  characteristic  attitudes  and  expressions  of 
the  emotion.  How  true  this  is  we  may  realise  by 
considering  how  successfully  a skilful  actor  can  portray 
even  the  more  complex  emotions. 

And  in  attempting  to  analyse  any  emotion  we  must 
'^/consider  it_  as_experie  and  displayed  aj^  a high 
pitch  of  in^^^^  ; for  we  cannot  hope  to  recognise 

the  elementary  qualities  and  impulses  of  the  primary 
emotions  in  complexes  of  low  intensity. 

/ We  may  roughly  divide  the  complex  emotional  states 
into  two  groups — on  the  one  hand  those  which  do  not 
necessarily  imply  the  existence  of  any  organised  senti- 
ment, and  on  the  other  hand  those  which  can  be 
experienced  only  in  virtue  of  the  existence  of  some 
sentiment  within  the  system  of  which  they  may  be 
said  to  be  excited.  We  will  consider  first  some  of 
^the  more  important  emotions  of  the  former  class. 


Some  of  the  Complex  Emotions  that  do  not  necessarily 
imply  the  Existence  of  Sentiments 

Admiration. — This  is  certainly  a true_emotion.  and 
is  as  certainly  not  primary.  It  is  distinctly  a complex 
affective  state  and  implies  a considerable  degree  of 
mental  development.  We  can  hardly  suppose  any  of 
the  animals  to  be  capable  of  admiration  in  the  proper 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  129 


sense  of  t;he  word,  nor  is  it  displayed  by  very  young 
children.  It  js_.not  juerely-_a  jjkasurabk^  ox 

contemplation.  One  may  get  a certain  pleasure  from 
the  perception  or  contemplation  of  an  object  without 
feeling  any  admiration  for  it ; a popular  ditty 

played  on  a barrel-organ  may  give  one  pleasure, 
though  one  admires  neither  the  ditty  nor  the  mode 
of  its  production,  and  though  one  may  a little  despise 
oneself  on  account  of  the  pleasure  one  feels,  ^or  is 
it  merely  intellectual  and  pleasurable  appreciation  of 
the  greatness  or  excellence  of  the  object.  There  seem 
to  be  two  primary  emotions  essentially  involved  in 
the  complex  state  provoked  by  the  contemplation  of 
the  admired  object,  namelv9wppder  and 
fesliog  01*  the  emotion  of^jsubmission.  ^^^Wrader  is 
revealed  by  the  impulse  to  approach  and  to  continue 
to  contemplate  the  admired  object,  for,  as  we  saw,  this 
is  the  characteristic  impulse  of  the  instinct  of  curiosity ; 
and  wonder  is  clearly  expressed  on  the  face  in  intense 
admiration.  In  children  one  may  observe  the  element 
of  wonder  very  clearly  expressed  and  dominant.  “ Oh, 
how  wonderful ! or — “ Oh,  how  clever  ! '*  or — ‘‘How  did 
you  do  it?”  are  phrases  in  which  a child  naturally 
expresses  its  admiration  and  by  which  the  element 
of  wonder  and  the  impulse  of  curiosity  are  clearly 
revealed . sp.ojL as  we  feel  that  we  completely 

understand  the  object  we  have  admired,  and  can  wholly 
account  for  it  our  wonder  ceases  and  the  emotion 
evoked  by  it  is  no  longer  admiration. 

NBut  admiration  is  more  than  wonder.^  We  do  not 
simply  proceed  to  examine  the  admired  object  as  we 
should  one  that  provokes  merely  our  curiosity  or 
wonder.  We  approach  it  slowly,  with  a certain  hesita- 

* I would  remind  the  reader  that  “ wonder  is  here  used  in  a 
sense  a little  different  from  the  usual  one  (see  p.  58), 

K 


130 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


tion  ; we  are  humbled  by  its  presence,  and,  in  the  case  of 
a person  whom  we  intensely  admire,  we  become  shy, 
like  a child  in  the  presence  of  an  adult  stranger ; we 
have  the  impulse  to  shrink  together,  to  be  still,  and  to 
avoid  attracting  his  attention ; that  is  to  say,  the  instinct 
of  submission,  of  self-abasement,  is  excited,  with  its 
corresponding  emotion  of  negative  self-feeling,  by  the 
perception  that  we  are  in  the  presence  of  a superior 
power,  something  greater  than  ourselves.  Now,  this 
instinct  and  this  emotion  are  primarily  and  essentially 
social.  The  primary  condition  of  their  excitement  is  the 
presence  of  a person  bigger  and  more  powerful  than 
oneself;  and,  when  we  admire  such  an  object  as  a 
picture  or  a machine,  or  other  work  of  art,  the  emotion 
still  has  this  social  character  and  personal  reference ; 
the  creator  of  the  work  of  art  is  more  or  less  clearly 
present  to  our  minds  as  the  object  of  our  emotion, 
and  often  we  say,  “ What  a wonderful  man  he  is  ! ” 

^s,  then,  the  emotion  of  admiration  capable  of  being 
evoked  in  us  only  by  other  persons  and  their  works  ? 
It  is  obviously  true  that  we  admire  nat^iigl^yects^.  a 
beautiful  flower  or  landscape,  or  a shell,  or  the  perfect 
structure  of  an  animal  and  its  nice  adaptation  to  its  mode 
of  life.  In  these  cases  no  known  person  is  called  to 
mind  as  the  object  of  our  admiration  ; but,  just  because 
admiration  implies  and  refers  to  another  person,  is 
essentially,  in  so  far  as  it  involves  negative  self-feeling, 
an  attitude  towards  a person,  it  leads  us  to  postulate  a 
person  or  personal  power  as  the  creator  of  the  object 
that  calls  it  forth.  Hence  in  all  ages  the  admiration 
of  men  for  natural  objects  has  led  them  to  personify 
the  power,  or  powers,  that  have  brought  those  objects 
into  being,  either  as  superhuman  beings  who  have 
created,  and  who  preside  over,  particular  classes  of 
objects,  or  as  a supreme  Creator  of  all  things ; and. 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS 


131 

if  the  intellect  rejects  all  such  conceptions  as  anthropo- 
morphic survivals  from  a ruder  age,  the  admiration  of 
natural  objects  still  leads  men  to  personify,  under  the 
name  of  Nature,  the  power  that  has  produced  them. 

It  is,  I think,  true  that,  if  this  sense  of  a personal 
power  is  not  suggested  by  any  object  that  we  contem- 
plate, the  emotion  we  experience  is  merely  wonder,  7 
or  at  least  is  not  admiration.  It  is  because  negative  | 
self-feeling  is  an  essential  element  in  admiration  that 
the  extremely  confident,  self-satisfied,  and  thoroughly 
conceited  person  is  incapable  of  admiration,  and  that 
genuine  ac^iration  implies  a certain  humility  and 
generosity^  It  may  be  added  that  much  admiration— all 
aesthetic  admiration,  in  fact — includes  also  an  element  of 
pleasure,  the  conditions  of  which  may  be  very  complex. 

As  an._exsmpl£„.Qj;_  .tbii^&irthsL„£QmBlkation  of  an 
emotion,  let  us  consider  the  nature  of  our  emotion  if 
^e  object  that  excites  our  admiration  is  also  of  a 
thrgateninif  or  mysterious  nature  and,  therefore,  capable 
of  exciting  fear — a tremendous  force  in  action  such 
as  the  Victoria  Falls,  or  a display  of  the  aurora  borealis, 
or  a magnificent  thunderstorm.  The  impulse  of 
admiration  to  draw  near  humbly  and  to  contemplate 
the  object  is  more  or  less  neutralised  by  an  impulse  to 
withdraw,  to  run  away,  the  impulse  of  We  are  kept 
suspended  in  the  middle  distance,  neither  approaching 
very  near  nor  going  quite  away ; admiration  is  blended 
with  fear,  and  we  experience  the  emotion  we  call  awe. 

Awe  is  of  many  shades,  ranging  from  that  in  which 
admiration  is  but  slightly  tinged  with  fear  to  that  in 
which  fear  is  but  slightly  tinged  with  admiration. 
Admiration  is,  then,  a binary  compound,  awe  a tertiary 
compound.  And  affi0.niayjb£_ further. Wen^  form 
a still  more  complex  emotion.  Suppose  that  the  power 
that  excites  awe  is  also  one  that  we  have  reason  to 


132 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


regard  as  beneficent,  one  that,  while  capable  of  annihilat- 
ing us  in  a moment,  yet  works  for  our  good,  sustains 
and  protects  us,  one  that  evokes  our  gratitude.  Awe 
then  becomes  compounded  with  gratitude  and  we 
experience  the  highly  compound  emotion  of  reverence. 
Reverence  is  the  religious  emotion  par  excellence;  few 
merely  human  powers  are  capable  of  exciting  reverence, 
this  blend  of  wonder,  fear,  gratitude,  and  negative  self- 
feeling. Those  human  beings  who  inspire  reverence, 
or  who  are  by  custom  and  convention  considered  to 
be  entitled  to  inspire  it,  usually  owe  their  reverend 
character  to  their  being  regarded  as  the  ministers  and 
dispensers  of  Divine  power. 

What,  then,  is  gratitude,  which  enters  into  the  emo- 
tion of  reverence  for  the  Divine  power?  Gratitude  is 
itself  complex.  It  is  a binary  compound  of  tender  emo- 
tion and  negative  self-feeling.  To  this  view  it  may  be 
objected— If  tender  emotion  is  the  emotion  of  the 
parental  instinct  whose  impulse  is  to  protect,  how  can 
this  emotion  be  evoked  by  the  Divine  power?  The 
answer  to  this  question  is — In  the  same  way  as  the 
child’s  tender  emotion  towards  the  parent  is  evoked. 
namely,  by  sympathy.  Tender  emotion  occupies  a 
peculiar  position  among  the  primary  emotions,  in  that, 
being  directed  towards  some  other  person  and  its 
impulse  directly  making  for  the  good  of  that  other, 
it  is  peculiarly  apt  to  evoke  by  sympathetic  reaction, 
of  the  kind  we  studied  in  Chapter  IV.,  the  same 
emotion  in  its  object;  and  this  sympathetically  evoked 
tender  emotion  then  finds  its  object  most  readily  in 
the  person  to  whom  it  owes  its  rise.  But  gratitude  is 
not  simply  tender  emotion  sympathetically  excited ; 
a child  or  even  an  animal  may  excite  our  tender  emotion 
in  this  way;  e,g,^  it  may  give  us  something  that  is  utterly 
useless  or  embarrassing  to  us,  and  by  doing  so  may 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  133 


touch  our  hearts,  as  we  say  ; but  I do  not  think  that  we 
then  feel  gratitude,  even  if  the  gift  involves  self-sacrifice 
on  the  part  of  the  giver.  Mr.  Shand  maintains  that 
into  gratitude  there  enters  some  sympathetic  sorrow  for 
the  person  who  excites  it,  on  account  of  the  loss  or 
sacrifice  sustained  by  him  in  giving  us  that  for  which  we 
are  grateful.  It  is  in  this  way  he  would  account  for 
the  tender  element  in  gratitude ; for,  according  to  his 
view,  all  tenderness  is  a blending  of  joy  and  sorrow, 
which  are  for  him  primary  emotions.  But  surely  we 
may  experience  gratitude  for  a kindness  done  to  us 
that  involves  no  loss  or  sacrifice  for  the  giver,  but  is 
for  him  an  act  of  purely  pleasurable  beneficence.  I 
submit,  then,  that  the  other  element  in  gratitude,  the 
element  that  renders  it  different  from,  and  more 
complex  than,  simple  tenderness,  is  that  negative  self- 
feeling which  is  evoked_by  the  sense  of  the  superior 
oower  of  anoth^.  The  act  that  is  to  inspire  gratitude 
must  make  us  aware,  not  only  of  the  kindly  feeling, 
the  tender  emotion,  of  the  other  towards  us ; it  must 
also  make  us  aware  of  his  power,  we  must  see  that 
he  is  able  to  da  for  us  something  that  we  cannot  do 
for  ourselves.  /This  element  of  negative  self-feeling, 
then,  is  blended  with  tenderness  in  true  gratitude,  and 
its  impulse,  the  impulse  to  withdraw  from  the  attention 
of,  or  to  humble  oneself  in  the  presence  of,  its  object, 
jmore  or  less  neutralises  the  impulse  of  the  tender 
lemotion  to  approach  its  object;  the  attitude  typical 
,and  symbolical  of  gratitude  is  that  of  kneeling  to  kiss 
the  hand  that  gives.  This  element  of  negative  self- 
feeling renders  gratitude  an  emotion  that  is  not  purely 
jpleasurable  to  many  natures,  makes  it  one  that  a proud 
man  does  not  easily  experience,  and  one  that  does  less 
[to  develop  a sentiment  of  affection  than  the  giver  of 
“^good  things  is  apt  to  expect  And,  if  the  seemingly 


134 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


beneficent  act  is  done,  not  from  pure  kindliness  or 
tenderness,  but  with  condescension,  if  positive  self- 
feeling and  a gratified  sense  of  power  accompany  or 
enter  into  the  motive  of  the  act,  it  is  apt  to  evoke 
negative  self-feeling  without  tenderness,  a negative 
self-feeling  painful  in  quality  that  may  lead  to  the 
growth  of  a sentiment  of  dislike  rather  than  of  love. 

Into  reverence  of  the  kind  we  have  considered 
negative  self-feeling  enters  from  two  sources,  as  an 
element  of  admiration  and  again  as  an  element  of 
gratitude.  But  there  is  a different  kind  of  reverence 
into  which  tenderness  enters  directly,  and  not  merely 
as  an  element  of  gratitude.  Let  us  imagine  ourselves 
standing  before  a great  Gothic  cathedral  whose  delicate 
and  beautiful  stonework  is  crumbling  to  dust.  We  shall 
probably  feel  admiration  for  it,  and  the  spectacle  of  its 
decay,  or  of  its  delicate  and  perishable  nature,  awakens 
directly  our  tender  emotion  and  protective  impulse  ; 
we  experience  a tender  admiration,  a complex  emotion 
for  which  we  have  no  special  name.  Now  let  us 
imagine  ourselves  entering  the  cathedral,  passing 
between  vast  columns  of  stone  where  the  dim  mysteri- 
ous light  is  lost  in  dark  recesses  and  where  reign  a 
stillness  and  a gloom  like  that  of  a great  forest ; an 
element  of  fear  is  added  to  our  emotion  of  tender 
admiration,  and  this  converts  it  to  reverence  (or,  if  our 
tender  emotion  does  not  persist,  to  awe).  >^his  is  a 
reverence  that  has  less  of  the  personal  note,  because 
less  of  negative  self-feeling,  than  that  of  which  gratitude 
is  a component.^ 

* One  is  tempted  to  ask,  Was  it  because  the  external  aspect  of 
the  Gothic  cathedral  is  apt  to  fall  short  of  exciting  the  fear  which 
is  essential  to  reverence,  that  in  so  many  cases  the  artists  of  the 
Middle  Ages  covered  the  exterior  with  grotesque  and  horrible 
figures,  like  those  of  Notre  Dame  of  Paris  ? 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  135 


The  history  of  religion^jeems  to  shovy  us  the  gradual 
genesis  of_  thjs  highly  complex  emotion.  Primitive 
religion  seems  to  have  kept  separate  the  superhuman 
objects  of  its  component  emotions,  the  terrible  or  awe- 
inspiring powers  on  the  one  hand,  the  kindly  beneficent 
powers  that  inspired  gratitude  on  the  other.  And  it 
was  not  until  religious  doctrine  had  undergone  a long 
evolution  that,  by  a process  of  syncretism  or  fusion,  it 
achieved  the  conception  of  a Deity  whose  attributes 
were  capable  of  evoking  all  the  elements,  of  the 
complex  emotion  of  reverence. 

There  is  another  group  of  complex  emotions  of 
which  anger  and  fear  are  the  most  prominent  con- 
stituents. When  an  object  excites  our  disgust,  and 
at  the  same  time  our  anger,  the  emotion  we  experience 
is  scorn,  ^/The  two  impulses  are  apt  to  be  very  clearly 
expressed,  the  shrinking  and  aversion  of  disgust,  and 
the  impulse  of  anger  to  attack,  to  strike,  and  to  destroy 
its  object.  This  emotion  is  most  commonly  evoked 
by  the  actions  of  other  men,  by  mean  cruelty  or 
underhand  opposition  to  our  efforts ; it  is  therefore  one 
f^omjvjakh.  original  mp  judgments  often^spring.  It 
is,  I think,  very  apt  to  be  complicated  by  positive 
self-feeling — we  feel  ourselves  magnified  by  the  presence 
of  the  moral  weakness  or  littleness  of  the  other,  just 
as  on  a lower  plane  the  physical  weakness  or  smallness 
of  those  about  one  excites  this  positive  self-feeling,  with 
its  tendency  to  expand  the  chest,  throw  up  the  head,  and 
strut  in  easy  confidence.  The  name  “scorn”  is  often 
applied  to  an  affective  state  of  which  this  emotion  is  an 
element ; but,  if  this  element  is  dominant,  the  emotion  is 
that  we  experience  when  we  are  said  to  despise  another, 
and  its  name  is  contempt,  the  substantive  correspond- 
ling  to  the  verb  despise ^scorn,  then,  is  a binary  compound 


136 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


of  anger  and  disgust,  or  a tertiary  compound  if  positive 
self-feeling  is  added  to  these  ; while  contempt  is  a binary 
compound  of  disgust  and  positive  self-feeling,  differing 
from  scorn  in  the  absence  of  the  element  of  anger. 

Feax.  and  are  very  apt  to  be  cornbillfid,  as  on 

the  near  view  of  a snake  or  an  alligator,  and  in  some 
persons  this  binary  emotion  is  provoked  by  a large  num- 
ber of  animals,  rats,  moths,  worms,  spiders,  and  so  on, 
and  also  by  the  mere  appearance  of  some  men,  though 
more  often  by  their  characters.  It  is  the  emotion  we 
ycall  loathing,  and,  in  its  most  intense  form,  horror. 
Loathing  is  apt  to  be  complicated  by  wonder,  which 
then,  in  spite  of  the  combined  impulses  of  fear  and 
disgust,  keeps  us  hovering  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
loathsome  object,  fascinated,  as  we  say,  or  in  horrible 
fascination. 

Again,  anger,  fear,  and  disgust  may  be  blended  to 
form  a tertiary  compound,  to  which,  if  to  any  emotion, 
the  name  “ hate  ” can  be  most  properly  applied,  although 
it  is  better  to  reserve  this  name  for  the  sentiment  of  in- 
tense dislike  or  hate,  within  the  system  of  which  this 
complex  emotion  is  most  commonly  excited. 

Envy  is  allied  to  this  group  of  emotions.  Without 
feeling  confident  as  to  its  analysis,  I would  suggest  that 
it  is  a binary  compound  of  negative  self-feeling  and  of 
bnger ; the  former  emotion  being  evoked  by  the  superior 
power  or  position  of  the  object,  the  latter  by  the  sense 
phat  the  envied  person  is  excluding  us  from  the  enjoy- 
ment of  the  goods  or  the  position  that  he  has  or  occu- 
jpies.  I do  not  think  that  true  envy  arises  except  when 
this  sense  of  deprivation  by,  or  opposition  on  the  part 
of,  the  object  is  present ; as  when,  for  example,  another 
takes  the  prize  we  aimed  at,  or  achieves  the  position  we 
hoped  to  occupy,  and  therefore  appears  as  an  obstacle 
to  the  realisation  of  our  ends. 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  137 


Complex  Emotions  that  imply  the  Existence  of  Sentiments 

We  may  now  consider  some  of  the  complex  emotional 
states  that  we  only  experience  in  virtue  of  having  pre- 
viously acquired  some  sentiment  for  the  object  of  the 
emotion. 

Within  the  sentiment  of  love  several  well-defined 
compounds  arise.  Reproach  seems  to  be  a fusion 
of  anger  and  of  tender  emotion.  Oh,  how  could  you 
do  it!”  is  the  natural  expression  of  reproach,  -^he 
person  who  is  the  object  of  the  sentiment  of  love  per- 
forms some  action  which,  if  performed  by  an  indifferent 
person,  would  provoke  our  anger  simply ; but  tender 
emotion,  which  is  habitually  evoked  by  the  mere  thought 
of  the  object  of  our  love,  prevents  the  full  development 
of  our  anger,  fuses  with  it  and  softens  it  to  reproach. 
This  is  the  simplest  form,  as  when  a mother  chides  her 
little  son  for  cruelty  to  an  animal.  A more  complex 
form  arises  when  the  sentiment  is  reciprocated,  or  sup- 
posed to  be  reciprocated,  and  its  object  acts  in  a way 
that  seems  to  show  indifference  to  us.  In  this  case  the 
pain  of  the  wound  given  to  our  self-regarding  sentiment 
and  of  the  check  to  our  tender  emotion  is  the  prominent 
feature  of  the  affective  state  and  overshadows  anger ; 
perhaps  the  name  “ reproach  ” is  most  properly  given  to 
this  more  complex  state. 

The  threat  of  injury  or  destruction  against  the  object 
of  the  sentiment  of  love  excites  in  us  anticipatory  pain 
of  its  loss  and  perhaps  also  some  anticipation  of  the 
sympathetic  pain  we  should  feel  if  the  threat  were 
realised;  and  this  pain,  mingling  with  tender  emotion) 
and  perhaps  with  a little  anger  against  the  source  of  the 
threatened  harm,  gives  rise  to  the  state  we  call  anxiety 
or  solicitude.  In  popular  language  we  are  said  to  fear 


138 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


the  loss  of,  or  injury  to,  the  object ; but  that  fear  enters 
into  this  emotion  seems  to  be  very  questionable. 

Jealousy  presents  a difficult  problem.  Animals  and 
very  young  children  are  commonly  said  to  exhibit 
jealousy.  A favourite  dog  will  be  emotionally  moved 
by  the  sight  of  his  master  fondling  a kitten  or  another 
dog ; he  will  sometimes  slink  away  and  hide  himself 
and  sulk,  or  he  will  keep  pushing  himself  forward  to  be 
caressed,  with  sidelong  glances  at  the  kitten.  Some 
very  young  children  behave  in  a similar  way,  when  their 
mother  nurses  another  child.  And  in  both  cases  the 
jealous  creature  is  apt  to  exhibit  anger  towards  the 
intruder.  These  facts  do  not  necessitate  the  assumption 
that  jealousy  is  a primary  emotion,  although,  possibly, 
in  order  fully  to  account  for  them,  we  should  have  to 
admit  an  instinct  of  possession  or  ownership.?  But 
even  in  these  cases  the  existence  of  a sentiment  of. 
affection,  however  rudimentary,  seems  to  be  implied  by 
this  conduct.  Certainly  full-blown  jealousy  is  only  de- 
veloped where  some  sentiment  of  love  or  attachment 
exists;  and  the  conditions  of  its  excitement  which 
constitute  the  object  of  the  emotion,  are  complex,  being, 
not  a single  person  and  his  situation  or  actions,  but  the 
relations  between  three  persons.  The  presence  of  a 
third  person  who  attempts  to  draw  to  himself  the 
regard  of  the  object  of  the  sentiment  does  noj^f  itself 
excite  jealousy,  though  it  may  excite  anger. /jealousy 
involves  anger  of  this  sort  towards  the  third  person,  but 
also  some  painful  check  to  one’s  own  tender  emotion 
and  sentiment.  It  is,  perhaps,  possible  to  imagine  a love 
so  wholly  disinterested  that  it  would  demand  no  recipro- 
cation of  its  tender  feeling.  Such  a sentiment  would  be 
incapable  of  jealousy,  and,  perhaps,  a mother’s  love 

' This  we  may  perhaps  identify  with  the  instinct  of  acquisition 
mentioned  in  Chapter  III. 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  139 


sometimes  approximates  to  this  type,  though  seldom. 
.pThe  sentiment  of  love  commonly  feeds  upon,  is  sus-'X 
'tained  by,  and  demands  reciprocation,  which,  being 
j given,  excites  in  turn  a positive  self-feeling  or  elation 
1 that  fuses  with  the  tender  emotion,  adding  greatly  to  its/ 
pleasurable  character.  And  the  sentiment  is  apt  to 
^ demand  for  its  complete  satisfaction  the  maximum  of 
such  reciprocation  ; so  long  as  we  feel  that  this  maxi- 
J mum  is  not  attained  we  are  uneasy,  we  lack  the  complete 
satisfaction  of^the  self-expansive  impulse,  the  impulse 
. of  positive  self-feeling}^  And  jealousy  arises  when  the 
j object  of  the  sentiment  gives  to  another,  or  merely  is 
thought  to  give  to  another,  any  part  of  the  regard  thus 
, claimed  for  the  self. y^t  is  thus  an  unstable  state  of 
I emotion,  of  which  the  most  constant  element  is  the 
' painfully  checked  positive  self-feeling,  and  which  tends 
to  oscillate  between  two  poles,  revenge  and  reproach, 

I according  as  one  or  the  other  person  is  more  prominently 
before  consciousness.  In  some  cases  the  tender  emotion 
may  be  at  a minimum  or  even  perhaps  lacking,  and  the 
sentiment  within  which  this  kind  of  jealousy  arises  is  a 
j purely  egoistic  sentiment : the  object  of  it  is  regarded  j 
merely  as  a part  of  one’s  property,  a part  of  one’s  larger 
self,  as  one  of  the  props  on  which  one’s  pride  is  built 
I up;  and  the  marks  of  affection,  or  of  subjection,  of  the 
object  towards  oneself  are  valued  merely  as  contributing 
to  feed  one’s  positive  self-feeling  and  self-regarding 
\ sentiment.  In  this  case  any  expression  of  regard  for  a 
third  person  on  the  part  of  the  object  of  the  sentiment 
\ provokes  a jealousy  of  which  the  anger  turns  mainly 
upon  that  object  itself.* 

* Tolstoy’s  ‘‘Kreutzer  Sonata”  is  a study  of  jealousy  of  this  type 
arising  within  a sentiment  which  was  certainly  not  love,  but  was  a 
strange  blend  of  hate  with  an  extended  self-regarding  sentiment. 

It  is,  I think,  obvious  that  jealousy  could  not  arise  within  a 
sentiment  of  hate,  pure  and  simple. 


140 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


There  is  an  emotion  that  is  properly  called  vengeful 
emotion ; it  is  not  merely  anger,  though  anger  may  be 
a large  element  in  it.  It  is  of  especial  interest  to  the 
moralist,  because  it  has  been  one  of  the  principal  sources 
of  the  institution  of  public  justice,  more  especially  of 
the  branch  dealing  with  personal  injuries  ; for  the  pursuit 
and  punishment  of  murderers  by  the  State,  or  by  officers 
of  the  law,  has  only  gradually  replaced  the  system  of 
private  vengeance  and  the  blood-feud.  One  respect 
in  which  the  impulse  of  revenge  differs  from  that  of 
simple  anger  is  its  long  persistence  owing  to  its  being 
developed  in  connection  with  a sentiment,  generally  the 
self-regarding  sentiment.  • The  act  that,  more  certainly 
than  any  other,  provokes  vengeful  emotion  is  the  public 
insult,  which,  if  not  immediately  resented,  lowers  one  in 
the  eyes  of  one’s  fellows.  Such  an  insult  calls  out  one’s 
positive  self-feeling,  with  its  impulse  to  assert  oneself  and 
to  make  good  one’s  value  and  power  in  the  public  eye. 
If  the  insult  is  at  once  avenged,  the  emotion  is  perhaps 
properly  called  resentment.  It  is  when  immediate  satis- 
faction of  the  impulse  of  angry  self-assertion  is  impos- 
sible that  it  gives  rise  to  a painful  desire  ; it  is  then  the 
insult  rankles  in  one’s  breast ; and  this  desire  can  only 
be  satisfied  by  an  assertion  of  one’s  power,  by  returning 
an  equally  great  or  greater  insult  or  inffiry  to  the 
offender — by  “ getting  even  with  him.”  --^his  painful 
struggle  of  positive  self-feeling,  maintaining  one’s  anger 
against  the  offender,  is  vengeful  emotion  or  the  emotion 
of  revenge. 

.though  the  emotion  is  most  easily  evoked,  perhaps,  by 
public  insult,  it  may  arise  also  from  injury  deliberately 
done  to  any  part  of  the  larger  self,  any  part  of  that  large 
sphere  of  objects  to  which  one’s  self-regarding  sentiment 
extends — injury  or  insult  to  one’s  family  or  tribe,  or 
to  any  larger  society  with  which  a man  identifies  him- 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  141 


self ; this  we  see  in  the  case  of  the  blood-feuds,  where 
the  killing  of  one  member  of  a family  or  tribe  excites 
this  emotion  in  all  its  other  members,  who  continue  to 
harbour  it  until  they  have  got  even  ” with  the  family 
^ the  slayer  by  killing  him  or  another  of  its  members. 

'^n  a still  greater  scale  it  may  be  provoked  as  a collec- 
tive emotion  throughout  a nation  by  defeat  in  war.  In 
this  case  the  painful  conation  or  desire  that  arises  from 
the  checked  impulse  of  positive  self-feeling  is  apt  to 
predominate  greatly  over  the  element  of  anger.  The 
attitude  of  the  French  nation  towards  Germany  for 
many  years  after  the  FVanco-Prussian  War,  and  of  a 
large  part  of  the  British  nation  towards  the  Boers  after 
Majuba,  was  determined  by  this  emotion  excited  within 
the  system  of  that  most  widely  extended  form  of  the 
self-regarding  sentiment  which  we  call  the  patriotic 
sentiment. 

^he  view  that  vengeful  emotion  is  essentially  a fusion 
of  anger  and  wounded  self-feeling  is  not  generally 
accepted.3  The  question  has  been  a good  deal  dis- 
cussed in  connection  with  the  history  of  punishment. 

NOr.  Steinmetz,  a German  authority,^  takes  the  view  that 
“ revenge  is  essentially  rooted  in  the  feeling  of  power 
and  authority,  its  aim  is  to  enhance  the  ‘self-feeling’ 
which  has  been  lowered  or  degraded  by  the  injury 
suffered.”  And  he  supports  this  view  by  showing  that 
primitively  revenge  is  undirected,  ie,y  seeks  satisfaction 
in  any  violent  assertion  of  one’s  power.  The  best 
illustration  of  such  undirected  revenge  is,  perhaps,  the 
running  amok  of  the  Malay.^  In  these  cases  the  man 
who  has  suffered  injury  or  insult  does  not  deliberately 
plan  out  and  execute  his  vengeance  on  those  who  have 

* Die  Entwickelung  der  Strafe.” 

* An  excellent  account  is  given  by  Mr.  Hugh  Clifford  in  a 
story  called  “ The  Amok  of  Dato  Kaya.” 


142 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


injured  him.  He  broods  for  a time,  no  doubt  filled 
with  the  painful  desire  arising  from  his  instinct  of  self- 
assertion,  and  then  suddenly  takes  his  kris  and  runs 
through  his  village,  cutting  down  every  living  being  he 
encounters,  until  he  himself  is  slain.  This  brooding 
and  fierce  dejection  produced  by  insult  is  sometimes 
very  intense  among  other  savages.  We  know  how 
Achilles  sulked  in  his  tent,  and  cases  have  been 
described  of  savages  who  have  lain  prone  on  the 
ground  for  days  together  and  have  even  died  when 
this  emotion  and  its  impulse  could  find  no  satis- 
faction. 

Professor  Westermarck,^  on  the  other  hand,  maintains 
against  Steinmetz  that  self-feeling  is  not  an  essential 
element  in  vengeful  emotion.  He  writes  : ‘‘  Resentment 
may  be  described  as  an  aggressive  attitude  of  mind 
towards  a cause  of  pain.  Anger  is  sudden  resentment, 
in  which  the  hostile  reaction  against  the  cause  of  pain 
is  unrestrained  by  deliberation.  Revenge,  on  the  o^er 
hand,  is  a more  deliberate  form  of  non-moral  resent- 
ment, in  which  the  hostile  reaction  is  more  or  less 
restrained  by  reason  and  calculation.  It  is  impossible, 
however,  to  draw  any  distinct  limit  between  these  two 
types  of  resentment,  as  also  to  discern  where  an  actual 
desire  to  inflict  pain  comes  in.”^ 

This  view  of  anger  and  revenge  and  of  the  relations 
between  them  is  very  different  to  the  one  proposed 
in  the  preceding  pages,  /^estermarck  makes  resent- 
ment the  fundamental  type  of  this  kind  of  emotional 
reaction,  and  distinguishes  two  varieties  of  it,  anger 
and  revenge,  which,  he  holds,  differ  merely  in  that 
while  anger  is  sudden  and  impulsive  resentment,  re- 
venge is  deliberate  and  controlled  resentment.  This, 

* ‘'Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral  Ideas/'  Chapter  II. 

■ Ibid,,  p,  22. 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  143 


I venture  to  think,  is  a failure  of  analysis  due  to  non- 
recognition of  the  guiding  principle  we  have  fol- 
lowed, the  principle  that  the  primary  emotions  are  the 
affective  aspects  of  the  fundamental  instinctive  mental 
processes  and  that  all  the  other  emotions  are  derived 
from  them  by  fusion  or  blending.  Westermarck  seeks 
to  support  his  view  by  saying  that,  if  one  has  written 
a book  and  it  has  been  adversely  criticised,  though  our 
self-feeling  receives  a painful  check  we  do  not  seek 
vengeance  on  the  critic  but  rather  set  out  to  write  a 
better  book.  Now,  it  is  dangerous  to  trust  to  the 
consideration  of  the  emotions  of  the  most  cultivated 
and  intellectual  class  of  men  in  seeking  light  on  the 
origin  of  the  emotions,  but  I think  that  most  authors 
would  avenge  themselves  on  the  unjust  and  damaging 
critic,  if  they  could  find  an  easy  opportunity ; and  our 
literary  disputes  frequently  are  but  the  most  refined 
expression  of  this  emotion. 

Our  account  of  these  emotions  is  nearer  to  that  of 
Steinmetz,  but  differs  from  it  in  recognising  that  venge- 
ful emotion  is  essentially  a binary  compound  of  anger 
and  positive  self-feeling.  /Ifhese  two  elements  may  be 
fused  in  all  proportions,  so  that  revenge  ranges  from  the 
hot,  blind  fury  of  the  Malay  running  dmok^  or  from  the 
emotion  of  the  child  furiously  striking  out  at  all  about 
him,  to  the  comparatively  cold,  plotting  revenge  that 
can  postpone  and  pursue  its  satisfaction  for  years. 

/Jhxid,  the  distinction  we  make  between  resentment 
and  revenge  is  that  resentment  is  the  fusion  of  anger 
and  positive  self-feeling  immediately  evoked  by  an  act 
of  aggression  and  does  not  necessarily  imply  the  ex- 
istence of  a developed  self-regarding  sentiment,  whereas 
revenge  is  the  same  emotion  developed  within  the 
system  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment — to  which 
circumstance  it  owes  its  persistent  character — with 


144 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


the  addition  of  painful  feeling  arising  from  the  con- 
tinued thwarting  of  the  two  impulses. 

The  vengeful  emotion  has  been  regarded  by  some 
authors,  e,g.^  by  Dr.  Mercier,i  as  the  root  of  moral 
indignation,  and  Westermarck  gives  this  position  to  his 
“ resentment.”  He  divides  resentments  into  two  great 
classes,  the  moral  and  the  non-moral ; the  non-moral 
class  consisting  of  anger  and  revenge,  the  moral  class 
of  moral  indignation  and  disapproval.  This  classifica- 
tion seems  to  involve  a cross-division  and  a confusion, 
not  only  because  he  fails  to  seize  the  difference  between 
anger  and  revenge,  but  also  because  he  has  no  criterion 
by  which  to  distinguish  his  moral  from  his  non-moral 
resentments.  Whether  revenge  is  ever  a moral  emotion, 
and  whether  the  disinterested  anger  against  the  cruel 
oppressor  that  we  have  called  moral  Jr^idignation  (the 
anger  that  arises,  in  the  way  we  have  studied  in 
Chapter  III.,  out  of  the  parental  instinct  exercised  on 
behalf  of  the  defenceless  creature)  is  ever  non-moral — 
these  are  questions  that  may  be  left  to  the  moralists 
for  decision  ;/i^ut  that  these  two  emotions,  revenge 
land  moral  indignation,  are  not  only  intrinsically  dif- 
Iferent,  but  that  they  are  evoked  by  very  different 
situations,  seems  as  indisputable  as  that  while  one  is 
essentially  egoistic  the  other  is  essentially  altruistic.'^ 
These  two  emotions  together  are  the  main  roots  S 
jof  all  justice;  neither  alone  would  have  sufficed  to) 

I engender  a system  of  law  and  custom  that  would  S 
secure  personal  rights  and  liberties,  and  neither  alone  ( 
[would  suffice  to  secure  the  efficient  administration  of  / 
justice. 

Approval  and  d^ap^oval  have  been  treated  of  by 
Westermarck  and  other  writers  as  emotions.  But  to 
describe  them  as  emotions  is  to  perpetuate  the  chaos  of 
* Criminal  Responsibility,”  Oxford,  1905. 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  145 


psychological  terminology.^  They  are  not  emotions 
but  judgments,  and  though,  like  other  judgments,  they 
are  often  directly  determined  by  emotions,  that  is  not 
always  the  case ; for  even  moral  approval  and  dis- 
approval may  be  unemotional  intellectual  judgments 
made  in  logical  accordance  with  previously  adopted 
principles. 

Shame  is  an  emotion  second  to  none  in  the  extent 
of  ,its  _ influence^  upon  social  behaviour.  There  are 
several  words  closely  connected  with  shame,  the  loose 
usage  of  which  is  a source  of  great  confusion,  e.g,^ 
shyness,  bashfulness,  and  modesty ; these  are  sometimes 
said  to  be  the  names  of  emotions,  sometimes  of  instincts. 
But_shyness,_and  m like  courage,  generosity,  and 

meanness,  are  qualities  of  character  and  of  conduct 
arising  out  of  the  possession  of  instincts  and  senti- 
ments, ^diik  and 

bastifulness.  if  not  an  _ernotion  in,  the_strict  sense  of  the 
word,  is  an  emotional  ^ate. 

Shame  has  given  much  trouble  to  psychologists, 
because  it  seems  to  imply  and  to  depend  upon  self- 
consciousness,  while  yet  the  behaviour  of  animals  and 
of  very  young  children,  whom  we  can  credit  only  with 
the  merest  rudiments  of  self-consciousness,  sometimes 
seems  to  express  shame.  Professor  Baldwin  2 has  dealt 
with  these  emotions  in  children  more  successfully  per- 
haps than  any  other  author.  He  distinguishes  two 
periods  in  the  development  of  what  he  calls  the  bash- 
fulness of  the  child ; an  earlier  period,  during  which 
what  he  calls  organic  bashfulness  is  evoked  by  the 

* In  a recent  treatise  on  ethics,  which  makes  a considerable 
show  of  psychological  precision,  they  are  described  on  one  page 
successively  as  emotions,  sentiments,  feelings,  and  judgments. 

* Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations  in  Mental  Development,’" 
chap,  vi.,  London,  1902, 

L 


146 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


presence  of  strangers — this  organic  bashfulness,  which 
is  shown  by  most  children  in  their  first  year,  he  identifies 
with  fear ; a later  period  in  which  the  child  makes 
efforts  to  draw  attention  to  himself— this  he  calls  the 
period  of  true  bashfulness.  Baldwin’s  description  of 
the  facts  seems  to  be  accurate,  but  he  fails  to  show  the 
origin  of  the  bashfulness  he  describes  and  fails  also  to 
show  its  relation  to  shame. 

The  way  has  been  prepared  for  the  solution  of  these 
and  other  difficulties  connected  with  shame  by  our 
recognition  of  positive  and  negative  self-feeling  as 
primary  emotions,  and  by  our  acceptance  of  the  im- 
portant distinction  between  emotions  and  sentiments 
that  Shand  has  so  clearly  pointed  out.  The  earliest 
reactions  of  a child  towards  strangers  are,  no  doubt, 
symptoms  of  fear,  as  Baldwin  says.  But  truly  bashful 
behaviour,  which  is jiot  usually  displayed  until  the  third 
year»,  has  nothing  to  do  _with  fear,  and  is.  I submit, 
symptomatic  of  a struggle  between  the  two  opposed 
impulses  of  the  instincts  of  self-display  and  sejf- 
abasement,  with  their  emotions  of  positive  an^  negative 
self-feeling:  a struggle  rather  than  a fusion,  for  the 
impulses  and  emotions  of  the  two  instincts  are  so 
directly  opposed  that  fusion  is  hardly  possible.  Con- 
sider the  little  boy  of  three  who,  in  the  presence  of  a 
stranger,  hides  quietly  behind  his  mother’s  skirt  with 
head  hung  low,  averted  face,  and  sidelong  glances, 
until  suddenly  he  emerges,  saying  “ Can  you  do  this  ? ” 
and  turns  a somersault  at  the  feet  of  the  stranger.  In 
adults  the  slightly  painful  agitation  that  most  of  us  feel 
when  we  have  to  figure  before  an  audience  seems  to  be 
of  the  same  nature  as  this  childish  bashfulness,  and  to 
be  due  to  a similar  struggle  between  these  two  impulses 
and  emotions.  Our  negative  self-feeling  is  evoked  by 
the  presence  of  persons  whom  we  regard  as  our  supe- 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  147 


riors,  or  who,  by  reason  of  their  number  and  of  their 
forming  a collective  whole,  are  able  to  make  on  us  an 
impression  of  power;  but  it  is  not  until  our  positive 
self-feeling  is  also  excited,  until  we  feel  ourselves  called 
upon  to  make  a display  of  ourselves  or  our  powers, 
to  address  the  audience,  to  play  a part  as  an  equal 
among  the  superior  beings,  or  even  merely  to  walk 
across  the  room  before  the  eyes  of  a crowd,  that  we 
experience  the  slightly  painful,  slightly  pleasurable,  but 
often  very  intense,  emotional  agitation  which  is  properly 
called  bashfulness,  hether  this  state  is  at  all  possible 
in  the  absence  of  self-consciousness  it  is  difficult  to  say. 
For  although  either  instinct  may  be  excited  quite  inde- 
pendently of,  and  prior  to  the  rise  of,  self-consciousness, 
it  would  seem  that  the  idea  of  the  self  and  some 
development  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment  are  neces- 
sary conditions  of  the  conjunction  of  the  two  opposed 
emotions  ; in  their  absence  one  of  the  opposed  emotions 
would  simply  preclude  or  drive  out  the  other.  In 
situations  that  evoke  bashfulness  the  negative  self- 
feeling is,  perhaps,  as  a rule,  more  directly  induced  by 
the  presence  of  the  other  person  or  persons,  while  the 
positive  self-feeling  is  more  dependent  on  the  idea  of 
the  self  and  on  the  egoistic  sentiment. 

But  the  state  of  bashfulness  we  have  considered  is 
not  shame.  ShamCj^n  sense  of  the  „word,  is 

only  possible  when  the  self-regarding  sentiment  has 
^come  well  developed  about  the  idea^ pX  the^ 
aUributes^apd^^^^  Then  any  exhibition  of  the  self 

to  others  as  deficient  in  these  powers  and  attributes, 
which  constitute  the  self  in  so  far  as  it  is  the  object  of 
the  self-regarding  sentiment,  provokes  shame.  The  self 
may  appear  defective  or  inferior  to  others  in  all  other 
respects  and  no  shame,  though  perhaps  bashfulness, 
will  be  induced.  Thus  a man  whose  self,  as  object  of 


148 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


his  self-respect,  includes  courage  or  athletic  prowess 
will  feel  shame  if  he  appears  cowardly  or  bodily  in- 
capable ; whereas  most  women,  whose  selves  as  objects 
of  their  self-regarding  sentiments  have  not  the  attribute 
of  physical  courage  or  athletic  capacity,  will  run  away 
from  a mouse  or  show  themselves  incapable  of  jumping 
over  a fence  without  the  least  pang  of  shame. 
ff  Shame,  then,  is  not  merely  negative  self-feeling,  nor 
is  it  merely  negative  and  positive  self-feeling  struggling 
together;  it  is  bashfulness  qualified  by  the  pain  of 
ba_ffl_ed  positive  self-feeling,  whose  impulse  is  strong  and 
persistent  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  emotion  is  excited 
within, the  system  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment  The 
conduct  that  excites  our  shame  is  that  which  lowers 
us  in  the  eyes  of  our  fellows,  so  that  we  feel  it  to  be 
impossible  for  our  positive  self-feeling  to  attain 
satisfaction.  Shame  thus  differs  from  vengeful  emotion, 
which  also  is  provoked  by  a blow  to  our  self-esteem, 
in  that  the  blow  comes,  not  from  another,  but  from 
ourselves ; or  rather,  though  it  comes  from  others,  it  is 
occasioned  by  our  own  conduct,  and  therefore,  though 
the  check  to  our  impulse  of  self-assertion  may  provoke 
our  anger,  this  anger,  unlike  that  of  vengeful  emotion,  is 
directed  against  ourselves,  and  is  therefore  incapable  of 
finding  satisfaction.  Hence  the  pain  of  the  check  to  our 
positive  self-feeling,  which,  when  it  comes  from  another, 
may  find  some  relief  in  the  active  pursuit  of  vengeance, 
can  in  this  case  find  no  relief  but  is  augmented  by  the 
pain  of  baffled  anger.  Shame,  then,  seems  to  be  closely 
allied  to  vengeful  emotion  and,  especially  in  brutal 
natures,  is  apt  to  be  accompanied  by  it ; buylt  differs 
from  vengeful  emotion  in  two  respects — first,  the  check 
to  positive  self-feeling  not  only  gives  rise  to  a painful 
and  angry  desire  for  self-assertion,  but  there  is  no 
possibility  of  satisfaction  for  this  desire,  of  “ getting 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  149 


even  ” with  the  person  from  whom  the  check  comes, 
because  that  person  is  oneself ; secondly,  there  is  an 
element  of  negative  self-feeling,  with  its  impulse  to 
withdraw  oneself  from  the  notice  of  others,  evoked  by 
the  recognition  of  one's  own  shortcoming.  In  revenge 
in  its  purest  form  this  element  of  negative  self-feeling 
has  no  part ; but,  if  in  the  face  of  insult  or  injury  one 
has  behaved  in  a cowardly  manner,  it  may  complicate 
the  emotional  state,  which  then  becomes  an  imperfect 
blend  of  revenge  and  shame. 

Mere  bashfulness  very  readily  passes  into  shame ; for, 
when  in  that  state,  one  is  acutely  aware  of  one's  self  in 
relation  to  others,  and  therefore  one  notices  at  once  any 
slight  defect  of  one's  conduct,  and  any  censure  or  dis- 
approval passed  upon  it  occasions  a painful  check  to 
positive  self-feeling  that  converts  bashfulness  to  shame. 
The  full  understanding  of  shame  implies  a study  of  the 
self-regarding  sentiment,  which,  however,  we  must 
postpone  to  a later  page. 

We  are  now  in  a position  to  inquire  into  the  nature 
of  sqy;oiy^t^d_joY.  which  we  have  rejected  from  our  list 
of  primary  emotions,  because,  as  was  said,  they  are 
algedonic  or  pleasure-pain  qualifications  of  emotional 
states  rather  than  emotions  capable  of  standing  alone. 

First,  a remark  must  be  made  upon  one  feature  of 
emotions  that  has  been  too  much  neglected.  Apart 
0^  from  the  pleasure  that  attends  the  successful,  and  the, 
pain  that  attends  the  unsuccessful,  conation  or  striving 
towards  an  end  involved  in  every  emotional  state^each 
primary  emotion  seems  to  have  a certain  intrinsic 
feeling-tone,  just  as  the  sensations  that  are  synthesised 
in  perception  have  their  feeling-tone  independently  of 
the  success  or  lack  of  success  of  the  perceptual  conation. 
And  the  intrinsic  JeeLh  seems  to 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


ISO 

follow  the  same  rule  as  that  of  sensations,  namely,  that 
with  increase  of  intensity  of  the  emotion  pljeasa^n^^  tends 
to  give  way  to  unpjea^nt  feelingj^^^  so  that,  while 
at  moderate  intensities  some  are  pleasant  and  others 
unpleasant,  at  the  highest  intensity  all  alike  become 
unpleasant  or  painful ; and,  perhaps,  at  the  lowest 
intensity  all  are  pleasant.  If  that  is  the  case,  then, 
like  the  sensations,  the  emotions  differ  greatly  from  one 
another  in  regard  to  the  position  of  the  neutral  point  of 
feeling-tone  in  the  scales  of  their  intensities.  Thus  fear 
at  low  intensity  does  but  add  a pleasurable  zest  to 
any  pursuit,  as  we  see  especially  clearly  in  children, 
sportsmen,  and  adventurous  spirits  generally  ; whereas  at 
high  intensity  it  is  the  most  horrible  of  all  experiences. 
On  the  other  hand,  tender-emotion  is  pleasantly  toned, 
save,  perhaps,  at  its  highest  intensity  ; and  positive  self- 
feeling is  even  more  highly  pleasurable  and  remains  so, 
probably,  even  at  its  highest  intensity. 

How,  then,  are  we  to  regard  joy  and  sorrow?  Is  joy 
mere  pleasure,  and  are  the  two  words  synonymous? 
Obviously  not ; joy  is  universally  recognised  as  some- 
thing more  than,  and  higher  than,  mere  pleasure. 
Whenever  did  poet  write  of  pleasure  in  the  lofty  strain 
of  the  beautiful  lines  that  Coleridge  wrote  of  joy  ? 

'*0  pure  of  heart,  thou  needst  not  ask  of  me 
What  this  strong  music  in  the  soul  may  be  I 
What,  and  wherein  it  doth  exist, 

This  light,  this  glory,  this  fair  luminous  mist, 

This  beautiful  and  beauty-making  power, 

Joy,  virtuous  lady  I Joy  that  ne’er  was  given 
Save  to  the  pure,  and  in  their  purest  hour. 

Joy  is  the  sweet  voice,  Joy  the  luminous  cloud — 

We  in  ourselves  rejoice  ! 

And  thence  flows  all  that  charms  or  ear  or  sight, 

All  melodies  the  echoes  of  that  voice. 

All  colours  a suffusion  from  that  light.” 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  151 


Clearly  joy  is  more  than  pleasure^  however  intense. 
Let  us  examine  what  is  by  common  consent  the  purest 
type  of  joy — the  joy  of  a loving  mother  as  she  tends  her 
beautiful  and  healthy  child.  In  this  case  many  factors 
contribute  to  produce  the  joyful  emotion  : (i)  There  is 
aesthetic  pleasure  in  the  contemplation  of  the  beauty 
of  the  object,  a pleasure  that  any  onlooker  may  share ; 
(2)  sympathetic  pleasure  reflected  by,  or  induced  in,  the 
mother  from  her  smiling  child ; (3)  tender-emotion, 
in  itself  pleasantly  toned  and  progressively  attaining 
satisfaction ; (4)  positive  self-feeling,  also  intrinsically 
pleasant  and  also  attaining  an  ideal  satisfaction  ; for 
the  mother  is  proud  of  her  child  as  an  evidence  of 
her  own  worth  ; (5)  each  of  these  two  primary  emotions 
of  the  mother  is  developed  within  the  system  of  a strong 
sentiment,  the  one  within  the  system  of  her  love  for  her 
child,  the  other  within  the  system  of  her  regard  for 
herself,  the  two  strongest  sentiments  of  her  nature, 
which,  in  so  far  as  the  child  is  identified  with  herself, 
become  welded  together  to  constitute  a master  sentiment 
or  passion  ; this  renders  the  emotions  more  intense  and 
more  enduring ; (6)  the  fact  that  the  emotions  are  not 
aroused  as  merely  isolated  experiences  by  some  casually 
presented  object,  but  are  developed  within  strongly 
organised  and  enduring  sentiments  gives  them  a 
prospective  reference ; they  project  themselves  into 
an  indefinitely  prolonged  future,  and  so  hope  or 
pleasant  anticipation  is  added  to  the  complex. 

/ Joy  is  always,  as  in  this  instance,  a complex  emotional 
state,  in  which  one  or  more  of  the  primary  emotions, 
developed  within  the  system  of  a strong  sentiment, 
plays  an  essential  part.  We  ought,  then,  properly  to 
’^peak,  not  of  joy,  but  of  joyous  emotion.  And  if,  by  an 
illegitimate  effort  of  abstraction,  we  should  seek  to 
separate  joy  from  the  emotions  with  which  it  forms  an 


152 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


inseparable  whole,  we  should  have  to  say  that  it  is 
pleasure,  but  pleasure  of  a high  type,  pleasure  of  com- 
plex origin,  arising  from  the  harmonious  operation  of 
one  or  more  sentiments  that  constitute  a considerable 
feature  of  the  total  mental  organisation. 

Reflexion  upon  sorro'w  yields  similar  results.  Take 
the  parallel  case  of  the  mother  sorrowing  for  the  loss 
of  her  child.  There  is  tender  emotion,  which,  though 
intrinsically  of  pleasant  feeling-tone,  is  in  this  case 
painful  because  its  impulse  is  baffled  and  cannot  attain 
more  than  the  most  scanty  and  imperfect  satisfaction 
in  little  acts,  such  as  the  laying  of  flowers  on  the  grave ; 
and  this  emotion,  being  developed  within  a strong  senti- 
ment, is  persistent,  and  the  pain  of  its  ineffectual  impulse 
constantly  recurs : again,  pride  and  hope  have  been 
dashed  down  and  few  can  avoid  some  negative  self- 
feeling under  such  conditions,  for  a part  of  the  larger 
self  has  been  torn  away,  and  some  thought  of  some 
effort  that  might  have  been  made  but  was  not  is  very 
apt  to  increase  the  intensity  of  this  painful  negative 
self-feeling. 

/in  this  case,  then,  we  should  properly  speak  of  a 
sorrowful  emotion,  which  emotion  is  a painfully  toned 
binary  compound  of  tender  emotion  and  negative  self- 
feeling. And  as  in  this  case,  so  in  every  other,  sorrow 
implies  one  or  more  of  the  primary  emotions  excited 
within  a sentiment.  Perhaps  in  every  case  tender  emotion 
must  be  an  element ; for,  take  away  the  tender  emotion 
and  only  painful  negative  self-feeling  or  humiliation  re- 
mains ; take  away  that  emotion  also  and  nothing  remains 
but  some  painful  depressed  feeling  that  cannot  properly 
be  called  sorrow,  though  it  might  perhaps  be  called  grief. 
Some  such  state  as  this  last  might  be  produced  by  an 
event  that  should  destroy  the  sentiment  of  love  at  the 
same  time  that  it  removed  its  object ; e.g.,  a friend,  the 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  153 


object  of  a strong  sentiment,  suddenly  by  some  cruel 
act  shows  us  that  he  has  renounced  our  friendship  and,  at 
the  same  time,  that  he  is  unworthy  of  it.  Under  these 
conditions  might  be  realised  a state  of  intolerable  pain, 
a state  almost  devoid  of  impulse  or  desire,  that  might  be 
called  grief,  but  not  sorrow.  But  it  is  hard  to  imagine 
even  under  such  conditions  a state  without  some  anger, 
some  resentment  or  disgust,  and  the  corresponding 
impulse,  /to  so  far  as  grief  is  properly  distinguishable 
from  sorrow.^  it  differs  in  having  less  of  tender  emo- 
tion and  more  of  anger,  as  when  the  bereaved  and 
grief-stricken  father  curses  God,  or  the  Fates,  or  the 
Universe. 

In  this  connection  we  may  consider  the  difference 
between  pity  and  sorrow.  Pity  in  its  simplest  form  is 
tender  emotion  tinged  _wjth  sympathetically  induced 
pain.  It  differs  from  sorrow,  which  also  is  essentially  a 
painful  tender  emotion,  in  the  sympathetic  character  of 
the  pain,  and  in  that  it  does  not  imply  the  existence 
of  any  sentiment  of  affection  or  love,  as  sorrow  does, 
and  is  therefore  a more  transient  experience,  and  one 
with  less  tendency  to  look  before  and  after.  There  is 
also,  of  course,  a sorrowful  pity,  as  when  one  watches 
the  painful  and  mortal  illness  of  a dear  friend.  In  this 
case  there  is  tender  emotion  and  there  is  sympathetically 
induced  pain  which  makes  the  state  one  of  pity ; but 
there  is  also  pain  arising  from  the  prospect  of  the  loss 
of  the  object  of  our  sentiment  of  love,  which  makes  the 
emotion  a sorrowful  one.  /That  sorrow  does  not  neces- 
sarily include  an  element  of  sympathetic  pain  is  clearly 
shown  by  the  sorrow  of  those  who  have  lost  a loved  one 
whom  they  sincerely  believe  to  have  entered  on  a 
happier  life.  The  pain  of  sorrow  is,  then,  a self-regarding 
pain,  whereas  the  pain  of  pity  is  not : hence  pity  is 
rightly  regarded  as  the  nobler  emotion. 


154 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


Before  passing  on  from  this  subject,  it  seems  worth 
while  to  inquire,  What  is  happiness  1 Is  happiness 
merely  pleasure  or  a sum  of  pleasures,  and  if  not,  what 
is  it  ? If  only  moralists  had  condescended  to  ask  this 
question  earnestly  and  had  found  the  answer  to  it,  how 
much  of  the  energy  devoted  to  ethical  discussion  during 
the  last  century  might  profitably  have  been  turned  into 
other  channels!  The  utilitarians  constantly  assumed 
that  happiness  and  pleasure  are  to  be  identified,  and 
used  happiness  and  sum  of  pleasures  as  synonymous 
terms,  generally  without  pausing  to  consider,  or  to  seek 
to  justify,  this  identification.  The  principle  that  the 
ultimate  test  of  the  relative  worth  of  different  kinds  of 
conduct  and  character  must  be  the  estimation  of  the 
degree  in  which  they  contribute  to  bring  about  the 
greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number,  this  principle, 
which  if  the  phrase  “greatest  number”  is  taken  as  referring 
to  the  remoter,  as  well  as  to  the  immediate,  future  can- 
not easily  be  rejected,  was  treated  as  identical  with  the 
maxim  that  the  aim  of  all  conduct  should  be  to  increase 
the  sum  of  pleasures  to  the  greatest  possible  extent ; 
and  this  maxim,  illuminated  by  Bentham’s  dictum  that 
‘‘  pushpin  is  as  good  as  poetry  provided  the  pleasure  be 
as  great,”  was  naturally  repulsive  to  many  of  the  finer 
natures ; it  provoked  in  them  a reaction  and  drove  them 
to  grope  among  obscure  and  mystical  ideas  for  their 
ethical  foundations,  and  so  has  greatly  delayed  the 
general  acceptance  of  the  great  truth  embodied  in  the 
utilitarian  doctrines.  J.  S.  Mill,  like  the  rest,  identified 
happiness  with  sum  of  pleasures,  and  attempted  to 
improve  the  position  by  recognising  higher  and  lower 
qualities  of  pleasure,  and  by  regarding  tl^  higher  as 
indefinitely  more  desirable  than  the  lower,  "^his  was  an 
effort  in  the  right  direction,  but  so  long  as  happiness  is 
regarded  as  merely  a sum  of  pleasures,  whether  higher 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  155 


or  lower,  and  pleasure  and  pain  as  the  only  motives  to 
action,  the  utilitarian  position  is  untenable.^ 

-^t  is,  I think,  indisputable  that  a man  maybe  unhappy 
while  he  actually  experiences  pleasure^  and  that  he 
might  experience  one  pleasure  after  another  throughout 
a considerable  period  without  ceasing  to  be  unhappy. 
Consider  the  case  of  a man  whose  lifelong  ambition 
and  hopes  have  recently  been  dashed  to  the  ground. 
If  he  were  fond  of  music,  he  might,  when  the  first  shock 
of  disappointment  had  passed  away,  attend  a concert 
and  derive  pleasure  from  the  music,  or  indulge  in  other 
pleasures,  and  yet  be  continuously  unhappy.  No  doubt 
his  unhappiness  would  make  it  more  difficult  to  find 
pleasure  and  might  make  his  pleasure  thin  in  quality ; 
but  the  two  modes  of  experience  are,  though  antagonistic, 
not  absolutely  incompatible  and  mutually  exclusive. 

'^n  a similar  way,  a man  may  be  happy  while  experi- 
encing pain,  not  merely  physical  pain,  but  pain  in  the 
proper  sense  of  the  word — painful  feeling.  Imagine 
the  case  of  a man  of  fine  nature  who  in  the  past  in  a 
moment  of  weakness  has  done  a mean  thing,  but  who  by 
his  efforts  has  completely  repaired  the  injury  done,  has 
set  his  relations  to  others  on  an  entirely  satisfactory  foot- 
ing, and  has  become  thoroughly  happy.  If  his  mind 
goes  back  to  that  act  of  meanness,  he  will  have  a painful 

Dntinue  to  be  happy  without 


case — that  of  a person  who  finds  an  exalted  happiness 
in  seeking  to  relieve  the  lot  of  the  sick  and  distressed. 
Such  a person  will  often  feel  sympathetic  pain,  but,  so 
long  as  he  knows  he  is  doing  good  to  others,  he  is 
happy  and  does  not  cease  to  be  happy  in  those  moments 

* Even  in  so  recent  and  excellent  a treatise  as  Dr.  Rashdall's 
Theory  of  Good  and  Evil"  this  identification  of  pleasure  with 
happiness  is  frequently  repeated,  verbally  at  least. 


another,  perhaps  a clearer. 


156 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


of  pitiful  emotion.  We  may  even  believe  that  the  cause 
of  such  sympathetic  pain  may  increase  the  happiness  of 
him  who  feels  itlp^uppose  that  to  a tender-hearted, 
sympathetic  person,  who  finds  his  happiness  in  doing 
good  to  others,  a friend  pours  out  his  troubles  in  a 
moment  of  confidence ; the  recipient  feels  sympathetic 
pain,  but  his  happiness  is  at  the  same  time  increased 
because  he  sees  that  his  friend  confides  in  him  and  finds 
relief  in  doing  so...t.*^o  not  facts  of  this  order  show 
yclearly  that  happiness  is  no  mere  sum  of  pleasures? 
What,  then,  is  it?  It  may,  I think,  be  indirectly  defined 
by  saying  that  happiness  is  related  to  joy  in  the  same 
wav  that  joy  is  related  to  pleasure.^  Pleasure  is  a 
jqualification  of  consciousness  of  momentary  duration 
!or,  at  most,  of  a fleeting  character,  and  it  arises  from 
some  mental  process  that  involves  but  a mere  fragment 
jof  one’s  whole  being.  arises  from  the  harmonious 

loperation  of  an  organised  system  or  sentiment  that 
constitutes  a considerable  feature  or  part  of  one’s  whole 
being ; it  has,  therefore,  potentially  at  least,  a greater 
[persistence  and  continuity  and  a deeper  resonance  ; it 
I is,  as  it  were,  more  massive  than  pleasure ; it  is  more 
intimately  and  essentially  a part  of  oneself,  so  that  one 
cannot  stand  aside  and  contemplate  it  in  philosophic  or 
Idepreciatory  detachment,  as  one  may  contemplate  one’s 
pleasures.  Hg,pgiijess  arises  from  the  harmonious  opera- 
tion of  all  the  sentiments  of  a well-organised  and 
unified  personality,  one  in  which  the  principal  sentiments 
support  one  another  in  a succession  of  actions  all  of 
which  tend  towards  the  same  or  closely  allied  and  har- 
monious ends.  Hence  the  richer,  the  more  highly 
developed,  the  more  completely  unified  or  integrated  is 
*the  personality,  the  more  capable  is  it  of  sustained 
happiness  in  spite  of  inter-current  pains  of  all  sorts. 

■ Cf.  p.  151. 


NATURE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  157 


In  the  child  or  in  the  adult  of  imperfectly  developed 
and  unified  personality,  the  pleasure  or  pain  of  the 
moment  is  apt  to  fill  or  dominate  the  whole  of  con- 
sciousness as  a simple  wave  of  feeling,  whereas  in  the 
perfected  personality  it  appears  as  a mere  ripple  on 
the  surface  of  a strong  tide  that  sets  steadily  in  one 
direction. 

If  this  account  of  happiness  is  correct,  it  follows  that 
to  add  to  the  sum  of  happiness  is  not  merely  to  add  to 
the  sum  of  pleasures,  but  is  rather  to  contribute  to  the 
development  of  higher  forms  of  personality,  personalities 
capable,  not  merely  of  pleasure,  as  the  animals  are,  but, 
of  happiness.  If  this  caaciusion  is  sound,  it  is  of  no  small 
importance  to  the  social  sciences  ; it  goes^£ar_tQJ*^-cracile 
th^  doctdo^.of  such  rnpraljsts^as  H.„  Green  with  that 
gf  the  mor^  gnli^tened^utilit^^^  ; for  the  one  party 
insists  that  the  proper  end  of  moral  effort  is  the  de- 
velopment of  personalities,  the  other  that  it  is  the 
increase  of  happiness,  and  these  we  now  see  to  be 
identical  ends. 

In  Chapter  III.  it  was  said  that  the  definition  of 
emotion  there  adopted  necessitates  the  exclusion  of 
surprise,  as  well  as  of  joy  and  sorrow,  from  the  list  of 
true  and  primary  emotions.  This  is  because  surprise  is 
an  affective  state  that  implies  no  corresponding  instinct 
and  has  no  specific  conative  tendency.  It  is  merely  a 
condition  of  general  excitement  which  supervenes  upon 
any  totally  unexpected  and  violent  mental  impression ; 
or  perhaps  it  is  more  accurate  to  say  that  it  is  produced 
by  an  impression  which  is  contrary  to  anticipation,  and 
to  which,  therefore,  we  cannot  immediately  adjust  our- 
selves, which  does  not  evoke  at  once  an  appropriate 
emotional  and  conative  response.  It_is  the^mpm^ 
state,  gf^onfu^^^  excitement  whic^^^  jnterj^eue3_bgtween 


158 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


the_  reception  jpf  the _impr^^  assumption 

of  the  appropriate  attitude  towards  it,  a moment  of 
conflict  and  confusion  tetween  the  habitual  antidpatory 
attitude  determined  by  the  course  of  previous  experi- 
ence and  the  new  _attitu^_pipyoked  by  the  unusual 
course  of  events. 

APPENDIX  TO  CHAPTER  V 

In  the  previous  editions  no  attempt  was  made  to  deal  with 
the  emotion  of  remorse.  The  following  note  is  added  to  make 
good  this  serious  omission. 

is  an  emotion  which  has  been  commonly  regarded  by 
moralists  as  the  most  intense  of  the  effects  produced  by  the 
activity  of  that  peculiar  entity  ‘‘the  conscience.''  It  is  a complex 
emotional  state  implying  the  existence^pf  a weU^  self- 

regarding,  ^sentimgnt...AMi_gen^  d~  moral  s^time^s'. ' 1 1 

arises  upon  the  recollection  of  some  past  action  that  one  deeply 
regrgjts ; like  all  regret  it  is  painful  owing  to  the  fact  that  the 
impulse  or  desire,  which  is  the  root  of  it  and  which  may  be 
the  impulse  of  any  one  of  several  instincts,  is  directed  towards 
the  past  rather  than  towards  the  future,  and  is  therefore  seen  to 
be  necessarily  and  for  ever  baffled.  But  it  differs  from  other 
forms  of  regret  in  that  thgxg^rgtted_eyentjs  o^  brought  about 
by  one's  own  acflon.  Hence  the  anger  which  arises  from  the 
baffled  desire  is  directed  against  oneself,  and  can  Bnd  no  satisfac- 
tion in  the  utterance  of  reproaches  or  curses ; for  these,  being 
directed  against  oneself,  do  but  add  to  the  painfulness  of  the  whole 
complex  state  ; and  even  the  doing  of  penance  {ix.y  the  infliction 
i of  punishment  upon  oneself),  though  it  yields  some  satisfaction  to 
! the  baffled  impulse,  does  not  heal  the  wound  to  one's  self-regard 
I caused  by  the  recognition  of  the  irrevocable  failure  to  realise 
[one's  ideal  of  self.  Through  this  last  factor  remorse  is  closely 
I allied  with  shame,  and  it  might  perhaps  be  adequately  defined  as 
[shameful  and  angry  regret. 


CHAPTER  VI 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS 

WE  Jiave  seen  that  a^^sentinient  is  an  organised 
system  of  emotional  dispositions  centred  about 
the  idea  of  some. object  Th^^rgani§at^ 
illgnts  iq_the_  developing^  nriind  is.Jetennlne(i_by  the 
qourse  of  experience  ; that  is  to  say,  the  sentiment  is  a 
growth  in  the  structure  of  the  mind  that  is  not  natively 
given  in  the  inherited  constitution.  This  is  certainly 
true  in  the  main,  though  the  maternal  sentiment  might 
almost  seem  to  be  innate ; but  we  have  to  remember 
that  in  the  human  mother  this  sentiment  may,  and 
generally  does,  begin  to  grow  up  about  the  idea  of  its 
object,  before  the  child  is  born.* 

The  growth  of  the  sentirnents  is  of  the  utmost  import- 
ance for  the  character  and  conduct  of  individuals  and  of 
societies  ; lLIs.  oxganisa  ajff(^ive„a^^ 

* In  a recent  article  criticising  M.  Ribot’s  book  Les  Passions  | 
(“Mind,”  vol.  xvi.,  p.  502)  Mr.  Shand  has  suggested  that  the  senti- 
ment of  love  is  innately  organised.  I cannot  see  any  sufficient 
grounds  for  accepting  this  suggestion,  and  I believe  that  any  such 
assumption  will  raise  more  difficulties  than  it  solves.  In  previous 
chapters  I have  suggested  that  certain  of  the  instincts  may  have 
peculiarly  intimate  innate  relations,  that,  e.g.,  the  instinct  of  pug- 
nacity is  thus  specially  intimately  connected  with  the  maternal 
instinct  and  with  the  sex  instinct  of  the  male.  But  even  this 
seems  to  me  very  questionable. 

159 


i6o 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


conative  life.  In  the  absence  of  sentiments  our  emo- 
tional life  would  be  a mere  chaos,  without  order,  con- 
sistency, or  continuity  of  any  kind  ; and  all  our  social 
relations  and  conduct,  being  based  on  the  emotions  and 
their  impulses,  would  be  correspondingly  chaotic,  unpre- 
dictable, and  unstable.  ,^lt  is  only  through  the  systematic 
organisation  of  the  emotional  dispositions  in  sentiments 
that  the  volitional  control  of  the  imn:  iate  promptings 


of  the  emotions  is  rendered  possible,  \gain,  our  judg- 
ments of  value  and  of  merit  are  rooted  in  our  sentiments ; 
and  our  moral  principles  have  the  same  source,  for  they 
are  formed  by  our  judgments  of  moral  value. 

/in  dealing  with  the  emotions,  we  named  and  classed 
them  according  to  their  nature  as  states  of  affective  con- 
sciousness and  as  tendencies  to  action ; and  we  may 
attempt  to  name  and  classify  the  sentiments  also 
according  to  the  nature  of  the  emotional  dispositions 
that  enter  into  the  composition  of  each  one.  But  since, 
as  we  have  seen,  the  same  emotional  dispositions  may 
enter  into  the  composition  of  very  different  sentiments, 
we  can  carry  the  naming  and  classification  of  them  but 
a little  way  on  this  principle,  and  we  have  accordingly 
but  very  general  names  for  the  sentiments.  We  have 
the  names  love.^  liking,  affection,  attachment,  denoting 
those  sentiments  that  draw  one  towards  their  objects, 
generally  in  virtue  of  the  tender  emotion  with  its  pro- 
tective impulse  which  is  their  principal  constituent ; and 
we  have  the  names  hat^  dislike,  and  aversion,  for  those 
that  lead  us  to  shrink  from  their  objects,  those  whose 
attitude  or  tendency  is  one  of  aversion,  owing  to  the 
fear  or  disgust  that  is  the  dominant  element  in  their 
composition.  The  two  names  love  and  hate,  and  the 
weaker  but  otherwise  synonymous  terms  liking  and  dis- 
like, affection  and  aversion,  are  very  general ; each 
stands  for  a large  class  of  sentiments  of  varied,  though 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  i6i 


similar,  composition  ; the  character  common  to  the  one 
class  being  the  fundamental  tendency  to  seek  the  object 
and  to  find  pleasure  in  its  presence,  while  that  of  the 
other  class  is  the  tendency  to  avoid  the  object  and  to  be 
pained  by  its  presence. 

We  must,  I think,  recognise  a third  principal  variety 
of  sentiment  which  is  primarily  the  self-regarding  sen- 
timent, and  is,  perhaps,  best  called  respecj;.  Respect 
differs  from  love  in  that,  while  tender  emotion  occupies 
the  principal  place  in  love,  it  is  lacking,  or  occupies  an 
altogether  subordinate  position,  in  the  sentiment  of 
respect.  The  principal  constituents  of  respect  are  the 
dispositions  of  positive  and  negative  self-feeling ; and 
respect  is  clearly  marked  off  from  love  by  the  fact  that 
shame  is  one  of  its  strongest  emotions. 

It  may  be  asked — If  respect  is  thus  a sentiment  that 
has  for  its  most  essential  constituents  these  self-regarding 
emotions,  how  can  we  properly  be  said  to  entertain 
respect  for  others  ? The  answer  is,  I think,  that  we 
respect  those  who  respect  themselves,  that  our  respect 
for  another  is  a sympathetic  reflexion  of  his  self-respect ; 
for  unless  a man  shows  self-respect  we  never  have 
respect  for  him,  even  though  we  may  admire  some  of 
his  qualities,  or  like,  or  even  love,  him  in  a certain 
degree.  The  generally  recognised  fact  that  we  may  like 
without  respecting,  and  may  respect  without  liking, 
shows  very  clearly  the  essentially  different  natures  of 
these  two  sentiments,  love  and  respect. 

The  older  moralists  frequently  made  use  of  the 
expression  **  self-love/'  and  in  doing  so  generally  con- 
founded under  this  term  two  different  sentiments,  self- 
love  and  self-respect.  Self-love  is  fortunately  a com- 
paratively rare  sentiment ; it  is  the  self-regarding 
sentiment  of  the  thoroughly  selfish  man,  the  meaner 
sort  of  egoist.  Such  a man  feels  a tender  emotion  for 

H 


i62 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


himself,  he  indulges  in  self-pity ; he  may  have  little 
positive  self-feeling  and  may  be  incapable  of  shame.’^ 
/Resides  the  sentiments  of  these  three  main  types, 
love,  hate,  and  respect,  which  may  be  called  complete  or 
full-grown  sentiments,  we  must  recognise  the  existence 
of  seirtiments  of  all  degrees  of  development  from  the 
most  rudimentary  upward ; these  may  be  regarded  as 
stages  in  the  formation  of  fully-grown  sentiments, 
although  many  of  them  never  attain  any  great  degree 
of  complexity  or  strength.  These  we  have  to  name 
according  to  the  principal  emotional  disposition  enter- 
ing  into  their  composition. 

The  sentiments  may  also  be  classified  according  to 
the  nature  of  their  objects  ; they  then  fall  into  three  main 
classes,  the  concrete  particular,  the  concrete  general,  and 
the  abstract  sentiments — e.g,^  the  sentiment  of  love  for 
a child,  of  love  for  children  in  general,  of  love  for  justice 
or  virtue.  Xlidr_dey^ljQpment  in  the  individual  follows 
this  order,  the  concrete  particular  sentiments  being,  of 
course,  the  earliest  and  most  easily  acquired.  The 
number  of  sentiments  a man  may  acquire,  reckoned 
according  to  the  number  of  objects  in  which  they  are 
centred,  may,  of  course,  be  very  large  ; but  almost  every 
man  has  a small  number  of  sentiments — perhaps  one 

* I shall  be  told  that  in  restricting  in  this  way  the  meaning  of 
the  term  self-love  I am  setting  aside  a usage  consecrated  by  age 
and  the  writings  of  innumerable  moralists.  I would  anticipate 
this  objection  by  asking — Why  should  the  psychologist  feel  any 
obligation  to  clog  and  hamper  the  development  of  his  science  by 
a regard  for  the  terminology  of  the  pre-scientific  ages,  while  the 
workers  in  other  scientific  fields  are  permitted  to  develop  their 
terminology  with  a single  eye  to  its  precision  and  to  the  accurate 
discrimination  and  classification  of  the  like  and  the  unlike  ? The 
chemist  is  not  held  to  be  under  any  obligation  to  class  earth,  air, 
fire,  and  water  with  his  elements,  nor  does  the  physicist  persist 
in  classing  heat  and  electricity  with  the  fluid  substances. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  163 


only— that  greatly  surpass  all  the  rest  in  strength  and 
as  regards  the  proportion  of  his  conduct  that  springs 
from  them. 

Each  sentiment  has  a life-history,  like  every  other 
vital  organisation.  It  is  gradually  built  up,  increasing 
in  complexity  and  strength,  and  may  continue  to  grow 
indefinitely,  or  may  enter  upon  a period  of  decline,  and 
may  decay  slowly  or  rapidly,  partially  or  completely. 

' When  any  one  of  the  emotions  is  strongly  or  re- 
peatedly excited  by  a particular  object,  there  is  formed 
Jthe  rudiment  of  a sentiment.  Suppose  that  a child  is 
thrown  into  the  company  of  some  person  given  to 
frequent  outbursts  of  violent  anger,  say,  a violent- 
tempered  father  who  is  otherwise  indifferent  to  the  child 
and  takes  no  further  notice  of  him  than  to  threaten, 
scold,  and,  perhaps,  beat  him.  At  first  the  child  experi- 
ences fear  at  each  exhibition  of  violence  ; but  repetition 
of  these  incidents  very  soon  creates  the  habit  of  fear, 
and  in  the  presence  of  his  father,  even  in  his  mildest 
moods,  the  child  is  timorous ; that  is  to  say,  the  mere 
presence  of  the  father  throws  the  child’s  fear-disposition 
into  a condition  of  sub-excitement,  which  increases  on 
the  slightest  occasion  until  it  produces  all  the  subjective 
and  objective  manifestations  of  fear.  As  a further  stage, 
the  mere  idea  of  the  father  becomes  capable  of  produce 
ing  the  same  effects  as  his  presence ; this  idea  has 
become  associated  with  the  emotion ; or,  in  stricter 
language,  the  psycho-physical  disposition,  whose  excite- 
ment involves  the  rise  to  consciousness  of  this  idea,  has 
become  associated  or  intimately  connected  with  the 
psycho-physical  disposition  whose  excitement  produces 
the  bodily  and  mental  symptoms  of  fear.  Such  an 
association  constitutes  a rudimentary  sentiment  that  we 
can  only  call  a sentiment  of  fear. 

In  a similar  way,  a single  act  of  kindness  done  by 


164 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


A to  B may  evoke  in  B the  emotion  of  gratitude  ; and 
if  A repeats  his  kindly  acts,  conferring  benefits  on  B, 
the  gratitude  of  B may  become  habitual,  may  become 
an  enduring  emotional  attitude  of  B towards  A — a senti- 
ment of  gratitude.  Or,  in  either  case,  a single  act — one 
evoking  very  intense  fear  or  gratitude — may  suffice  to 
render  the  association  more  or  less  durable  and  the 
attitude  of  fear,  or  gratitude,  of  B towards  A more  or 
less  permanent. 

The  same  is  true  of  most,  perhaps  of  all,  of  the 
emotions  of  the  class  that  do  not  presuppose  sentiments 
already  formed  for  the  object  of  the  emotion — e.g.,  of 
admiration,  of  anger,  of  disgust,  of  pity.  V^e  rnnst. 
then,  recognise,  as  limiting  cases  on  the  side  of  sim- 
plicity, sentiments  formed  by  the  association  of  a single 
emotional  disposition  with  the  idea  of  some  object.  But 
it  can  seldom  happen  that  a sentiment  persists  in  this 
mdimen^ry  condition  for  any  long  period  of  time. 
Any  such  sentiment  is  liable  to  die  away  for  lack  of 
stimulus,  or,  if  further  relations  are  maintained  with  its 
object,  to  develop  into  a more  complex  organisation. 
Thus  the  simple  sentiment  of  fear,  created  in  the  way 
we  have  imagined,  will  tend  to  develop,  and  will  most 
readily  become  hate  by  the  incorporation  of  other 
emotional  dispositions ; anger  may  be  frequently 
aroused  by  the  harsh  punishments  and  restrictions 
imposed  by  the  violent-tempered  father,  perhaps  also 
revenge,  disgust,  and  shame ; and  after  each  occasion 
on  which  the  father  becomes  the  object  of  these  emo- 
tions, they  remain  more  ready  to  be  stirred  by  him  or 
by  the  mere  thought  of  him  ; they  all,  in  virtue  of  their 
repeated  excitement  by  this  one  object,  become 
associated  with  the  object  more  and  more  intimately, 
until  the  mere  idea  of  him  may  suffice  to  throw  them 
all  at  once  into  a condition  of  sub-excitement,  or  to 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  165 


arouse  all  of  them  in  turn  or  in  conjunction  to  full 
activity.  So  the  rudimentary  sentiment,  whose  only 
emotional  constituent  is  fear,  develops  into  a full- 
blown hatred. 


and  highly  complex  sentinient,^  and  let  us  consider 
its  development.  By  reason  of  its  helplessness,  its 
delicacy,  its  distresses,  the  young  child  evokes  sooner 
or  later  the  tender  emotion  of  the  parent,  if  he  is  at  all 
capable  of  this  emotion ; and  if  the  parent  does  not, 
through  laziness  or  under  the  influence  of  a bad 
tradition,  restrain  the  protective  impulse,  it  finds  its 
satisfaction  in  a series  of  tender  acts.  Each  time  the 
emotion  and  its  impulse  are  brought  into  operation 
by  this  particular  object,  they  are  rendered  more  easily 
excitable  in  the  same  way,  until  the  mere  idea  of  this 
object  is  constantly  accompanied  by  some  degree  of 
the  emotion,  however  feeble.  This  gives  the  object  a 
special  power  of  attracting  and  holding  the  attention 
of  the  parent,  who  therefore  constantly  notices  the 
child’s  expressions ; and  these  evoke  by  sympathetic 
reaction  the  corresponding  feelings  and  emotions 
in  the  parent,  '^hus  all  the  tender  and  attracting 
emotions  are  repeatedly  aroused  by  this  one  object, 
either  singly  or  in  combination — pity,  wonder,  admira- 
tion, gratitude,  solicitude,  as  well  as  sympathetic  pain 
and  pleasure,  and  quick  anger  at  neglect  or  injury  of 
the  child  by  others.  This,  perhaps,  is  as  far  as  the 


sentiment  normally  develops  while  the  child  is  very 
young.aj 'But  there  comes  in  the  ordinary  course  of 
things  a time  when  the  child  learns  to  reciprocate  the 
parent’s  sentiment  and,  by  its  expressions  of  tenderness 
or  gratitude,  intensifies  the  satisfaction  of  the  parental 
emotions ; in  so  doing  it  welds  the  father’s  sentiment 
still  more  strongly  than  before,  and  also  establishes 


i66 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


the  relation  presently be  discussed  under  the  head 
of  active  sympathy.  But  this  is  not  all ; the  parent 
is  apt  to  identify  the  child  with  himself  in  a peculiarly 
intimate  way,  for  he  knows  that  the  world  in  general 
regards  its  qualities  and  its  defects  as,  in  a sense,  his 
own ; and  so  his  self-regarding  sentiment  of  respect  or 
of  pride  becomes  directly  extended  to  the  child  ; what- 
ever is  admirable  about  it  brings  satisfaction  to  his 
positive  self-feeling ; whatever  is  defective  humbles 
him,  excites  his  negative  self-feeling ; its  shame  or 
disgrace  is  his  shame,  its  triumphs  are  his  triumphs, 
^t  is  the  fusion  of  these  two  sentiments,  the  altruistic 
and  the  egoistic,  in  the  parental  sentiment  that  gives 
St  its  incomparable  hold  upon  our  natures,  and  makes 
at  a sentiment  from  ;which  proceed  our  most  intense 
jjoys  and  sorrows.  ^ And  not  only  are  the  various 
emotions,  such  as  tender  emotion  and  positive  self- 
feeling, excited  in  complex  conjunctions,  but  it  would 
seem  that/4ach  emotion  excited  within  the  system  of 
any  complex  sentiment  acquires  an  increased  intensity 
and  its  impulse  an  additional  energy  from  its  member- 
ship in  the  system,  an  increment  of  energy  which  is 
greater  the  larger  the^  number  of  dispositions  comprised 
within  the  system.^^'To  all  this  must  be  added  yet 
another  factor — every  effort  and  every  sacrifice  made 
on  the  child’s  behalf,  every  pain  suffered  through  it, 
adds  to  the  strength  of  the  sentiment;  for  with  each 
such  incident  we  feel  that  we  put  something  of  our- 
selves into  the  object  of  the  sentiment;  and  this  sense 
of  the  accumulation  of  our  efforts  and  sacrifices  gives 

* For  the  same  reason  other  sentiments  of  this  type,  resulting 
from  fusion  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment  with  the  love  of  an 
object  other  than  the  self  (of  which  patriotism  is  the  most 
striking  example),  acquire  their  power  of  supplying  dominant 
or  extremely  powerful  motives. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  167 


it  an  additional  value;  we  come  to  regard  it  as  an 
investment  in  which  we  have  sunk  our  capital  bit  by 
bit,  to  lose  which  would  be  to  lose  that  which  embodies 
our  past  efforts.  In  this  way  also  the  child  becomes 
identified  with  ourselves,  so  that,  as  with  any  other 
thing,  such  as  a work  of  art  or  science,  to  the  shaping 
of  which  our  best  powers  have  been  devoted,  approval 
of  it  gives  us  pleasure  and  disapproval  pain,  equally 
with  approval  or  disapproval  of  ourselves. 

Though  the  parental  sentiment  in  its  completest  form 
arises  from  the  fusion  of  the  purely  altruistic  with  the 
extended  self-regarding  sentiment,  it  mav  be  wholly 
of  one  or  other  type.  vThe  mother  of  a child  that  is 
mentally  and  physically  defective  can  find  little  occasion 
for  extending  to  it  her  self-respect  or  pride ; it  does 
not  minister  to  her  positive  self-feeling,  but  rather,  in 
so  far  as  it  is  identified  with  herself,  is  a cause  of 
shame  and  pain.  Yet  the  maternal  instinct  often  rises 
superior  to  these  influences,  which  would  make  for  hate 
rather  than  for  love ; the  greater  needs  of  the  child  do 
but  call  out  more  intensely  and  frequently  her  tender 
emotion,  and  she  cherishes  it  with  a sentiment  that  is 
almost  purely  tender. 

^On  the  other  hand,  many  a father’s  sentiment  for 
his  children  is  very  little,  or  not  at  all,  tender,  is  not 
properly  love,  but  is  a mere  extension  of  his  self- 
regarding  sentiment.  He  is  gratified — Le.y  his  positive 
self-feeling  attains  satisfaction — when  they  are  admired 
or  when  they  achieve  success  of  any  kind ; he  feels 
shame  when  they  appear  bad-mannered  or  ill-dressed 
or  stupid ; and  he  labours  to  fit  them  to  take  a good 
place  in  the  world,  or  is  ambitious  for  them,  just  as 
he  labours  for,  and  is  ambitious  for,  himself;  all, 
perhaps,  without  once  experiencing  the  least  touch  of 
tender  emotion  for  them. 


i68 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


The  sentiment  of  affection  for  equal  generally 
takes  its,  rise,  not  in  simple  tender  emotion,  but  in 
admiration,  or  gratitude,  or  pity,  _and__ is  ^especially 
developed  by  active  y^mpathy.  By  active  sympathy 
I mean  sympathy  in  the  fuller,  more  usual,  sense  of 
the  word ; we  must  carefully  distinguish  it  from  the 
simple,  primitive,  or  passive  sympathy  discussed  in 
Chapter  IV.  Active  sympathy  plays,  or  may  play, 
a minor  part  in  the  genesis  of  the  parental  sentiment, 
but  it  is  of  prime  importance  for  the  development  of 
the  .sentiraenjt  of  afifection  J?etween_^uals ; for  while 
the  former  may  be  wholly  one-sided,  the  latter  can 
hardly  become  fully  formed  and  permanent  without 
some  degree  of  reciprocation  and  of  sympathy  in  this 
fuller  sense. 

I Active  sympathy  presents  a difficult  problem,  which 
jwe  may  consider  in  this  connexion.  It  involves  a 
ireciprocal  relation  between  at  least  two  persons ; either 
'party  to  the  relation  not  only  is  apt  to  experience  the 
demotions  displayed  by  the  other,  but  he  desires  also 
I that  the  other  shall  share  his  own  emotions  ; he  actively 
iseeks  the  sympathy  of  the  other,  and,  when  he  has 
'communicated  his  emotion  to  the  other,  he  attains 
ia  peculiar  satisfaction  which  greatly  enhances  his 
pleasure  and  his  joy,  or,  in  the  case  of  painful  emotion, 
(diminishes  his  pain. 

This  relation  of  active  sympathy  is  apt  to  grow  up 
between  any  two  persons  who  are  thrown  much 
together,  if  they  are  commonly  stirred  to  similar 
emotions  by  similar  objects;  and  that  can  only  be 
the  case  if  they  have  similar  sentiments.  Two  persons 
may  live  together  for  years,  and,  if  their  sentiments  are 
very  different,  if  one  of  them  likes  and  dislikes  the 
things  that  are  for  the  most  part  indifferent  to  the 
other,  there  will  be  no  habitual  sympathy  established 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  169 


between  them.  There  may  be  a reciprocal  sentiment 
of  love  without  active  sympathy,  as  in  some  cases  of 
mother  and  child  * ; and  in  such  cases  there  will  be 
reciprocation  of  tender  emotion,  and  when  one  party 
to  the  relation  is  in  distress  the  other  will  pity  and 
succour  him.  But  such  a sentiment  of  love  without 
active  sympathy  brings  little  joy  and  is  likely  to 
be  troubled  by  frequent  jars,  irritations,  and  regrets. 
Instances  of  this  kind  of  relation  are  common  enough ; 
they  show  clearly  that  tender  emotion  and  pity,  though 
often  in  popular  speech  and  by  many  psychologists 
confused  with  sympathy,  do  not  constitute  sympathy ; 
and  they  show  also  that  sympathy  is  not  essential  to 
love,  that,  in  short,  sympathy  fboth  the  simple  or 
passive  and  the  complex  active  variety)  and  tender 
^mptioiL  are  radically  distinct. 

If,  however,  the  relation  of  active  sympathy  is 
established  between  any  two  persons,  some  sentiment 
of  affection  is  pretty  sure  to  grow  up  in  both  parties, 
if  they  are  at  all  capable  of  tender  emotion ; and, 
except  in  the  case  of  parental  love/active  sympathy 
is  the  most  sure  foundation  of  love  and  is  an  essential 
feature  of  any  completely  satisfying  affection. 

We  have,  then,  to  ask,  do  we  seek  and  find  this 
peculiar  satisfaction  in  the  mere  fact  of  another  person’s 
sharing  our  emotion?  In  the  case  of  the  pleasurable 
emotions  we  may  see  a partial  explanation  in  the  fact 
that  the  sharing  of  our  emotion  by  another  intensifies 
our  own  emotion  by  way  of  the  fundamental  reaction 
of  primitive  sympathy ,2  and  therefore  intensifies  our 
pleasure  or  our  joy.  But  the  sharing  of  our  emotion 
intensifies  also  the  painful  emotions,  anger,  revenge, 
fear,  pity,  and  sorrowful  emotion ; yet  in  these  cases 

* E.g.,  the  relation  of  mother  and  son  in  Mr.  Wells’s  **  Days  of 
the  Comet.’  * Cp,  Chapter  IV. 


170 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


also  we  desire  that  others  shall  share  our  emotion 
and  find  a certain  satisfaction  when  they  do  so. 

Some  further  explanation  of  active  sympathy  is  there- 
fore req^uir^d,  and  in  order  to  find  it  we  must,  I think, 
fall  back  on  the  gregarious  instinct  The  excitement  of 
this,  the  pre-eminently  social  instinct,  is  accompanied, 
as  we  have  seen,  by  no  specific  emotion  of  well-marked 
quality.  In  the  simplest  cases  it  operates  merely  to 
produce  an  uneasy  restlessness  in  any  member  of  a herd 
or  other  animal  society  that  has  become  separated  from 
its  fellows,  impelling  him  to  wander  to  and  fro  until  he 
finds  and  rejoins  the  herd.  In  the  present  connection  it 
is  important  that  this  gregarious  impulse  seems  gene- 
rally to  be  called  into  play  in  conjunction  with  some 
other  instinct ; that  is  to  say,  the  excitement  of  any 
other  instinct  seems  to  predispose  to  the  excitement  of 
this  one.  This  is,  perhaps,  most  obvious  in  the  case  of 
fear.  The  gregarious  animal  may  graze  in  comfort  at 
some  distance  from  his  fellows,  but  at  the  slightest 
alarm  will  run  first  to  join  them,  before  making  off  in 
headlong  flight.  But  it  is  true  also  of  anger  and 
curiosity,  of  the  migratory  instinct,  of  the  food-seeking 
impulse  when  sharpened  by  hunger,  and  of  the  mating 
instinct.  Animals  of  many  species  live  for  the  most 
part  more  or  less  scattered,  or  in  family  groups  only, 
but  come  together  in  vast  collections  when  these  special 
instincts  are  excited. 

seems,  then,  that  the  gregarious  instinct  supple- 
ments, as  it  were,  each  of  the  special  instincts,  rendering 
complete  satisfaction  of  their  impulses  impossible,  until 
each  animal  is  surrounded  by  others  of  the  same  species 
in  a similar  state  of  excitement.  Since  man  certainly 
inherits  this  instinct,  we  may  see  in  this  instinct  the 
principle  that  we  need  for  the  explanation  of  the  de- 
velopment of  active  sympathy  from  the  crude  sympa- 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  171 


thetic  reaction  or  mere  sympathetic  Induction  of 
emotion  that  we  studied  in  Chapter  IV.  The  blind 
impulse  of  the  gregarious  animal  to  seek  the  company  of 
his  fellows,  whenever  one  of  his  other  instincts  is  excited, 
becomes  in  us  the  desire  of  seeing  ourselves  surrounded 
by  others  who  share  our  emotion ; and  it  is  apt  to 
become  directed  to  seeking  the  sympathetic  response 
of  some  one  person  in  whom  we  are  sure  of  evoking  it ; 
and  then,  having  become  habitually  directed  to  that 
person,  it  finds  a more  certain  and  complete  and 
detailed  satisfaction  than  is  possible  if  it  remains 
un^ecialised. 

-^That  we  are  right  in  thus  finding  the  root  of  active 
sympathy  in  an  ancient  and  deep-seated  instinct,  and 
that  the  impulse  of  this  instinct  is  distinct  from  the 
tender  or  protective  impulse,  is  shown  by  the  great 
differences  between  us  in  regard  to  this  impulse  in  spite 
of  similar  conditions  of  life,  differences  that  do  not  run 
parallel  with  our  differences  in  regard  to  the  strength  of 
the  tender  impulse.'^There  are  men  who  seem  almost 
devoid  of  active  sympathy ; they  are  content  to  admire, 
or  to  be  indignant,  or  vengeful,  or  tender,  or  curious,  or 
grateful,  alone,  and  they  derive  little  or  no  satisfaction 
from  finding  that  others  are  sharing  their  emotions. 
Such  a man  is  not  necessarily  incapable  of  the  tender 
emotion  and  the  sentiment  of  love ; he  may  be 
tenderly  devoted  to  his  family  and  be  capable  of  the 
most  truly  disinterested  conduct,  but  he  is  by  nature  a 
solitary,  his  gregarious  instinct  is  abnormally  weak,  and 
therefore  he  is  content  to  bury  his  joys  and  his  sorrows 
in  his  own  bosom. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  person  in  whom  this  impulse 
is  strong  can  find,  when  alone,  no  enjoyment  in  the 
things  that  give  him,  when  in  sympathetic  company, 
the  keenest  delight.  He  may,  for  example,  be  an 


172 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


enthusiastic  admirer  of  natural  beauty ; but  if,  by 
some  strange  chance,  he  takes  a walk  alone  through 
the  most  beautiful  scenes,  his  emotional  stirrings,  which, 
if  shared  by  others,  would  be  a pure  delight,  are  accom- 
panied by  a vague  though  painful  desire,  whose  nature 
he  may  or  may  not  clearly  recognise.  And  the  chances 
are  that  he  occupies  himself  in  making  mental  notes  of 
the  scenes  before  him  and  hurries  home  to  give  a 
glowing  description  of  them  to  some  friend  who,  he 
knows,  will  be  stirred  in  some  degree  to  share  his 
emotions.  Some  persons,  in  whom  this  impulse  is  but 
little  specialised  though  strong  and  whose  emotions  are 
quick  and  vivid,  are  not  satisfied  until  all  about  them 
share  their  emotions ; they  are  pained  and  even  made 
angry  by  the  spectacle  of  any  one  remaining  unmoved 
by  the  objects  of  their  own  emotions. 
vlO  Many  children  manifest  very  clearly  this  tendency  of 
active  sympathy  ; they  demand  that  their  every  emotion 
shall  be  shared  at  once.  “ Oh,  come  and  look  ! ” is  their 
constant  cry  when  out  for  a walk,  and  every  object  that 
excites  their  curiosity  or  admiration  is  brought  at  once, 
or  pointed  out,  to  their  companion.  And  if  that  com- 
panion is  unsympathetic,  or  is  wearied  by  their  too 
frequent  demands  upon  his  emotional  capacities,  the 
urgency  of  this  impulse  gives  rise  to  pain  and  anger 
and,  perhaps,  a storm  of  tears.''^l)On  the  other  hand, 
another  child,  brought  up,  perhaps,  under  identical 
conditions,  but  in  whom  this  impulse  is  relatively  weak, 
will  explore  a garden,  interested  and  excited  for  hours 
together,  without  once  feeling  the  need  for  sympathy, 
without  once  calling  on  others  to  share  his  emotion. 

^ Active  sympathy  is.  then,  egoistic,  it  is  a seeking  of 
one’s  own  satisfaction.  There  are  selfish  men  in  whom 
this  tendency  is  very  strong ; such  men  wear  out  their 
wives,  or  others  about  them,  by  their  constant  demands 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENTIMENTS  173 


for  sympathetic  emotion,  regardless  of  the  strain  they 
put  upon  their  companions,  who  cannot  always  be  in 
the  mood  to  sympathise.  Such  ^men  constantly 
demand  sympathy  and  give  but  little,  ^vynpathv  then. 
whether  in  the  active  or  the  passive  form,  is  not  the  root 
of  altruism,  as  Bain  and  others  would  have  it.  Nor  is 
it,  as  Mr,  Sutherland  maintains,  to  be  identified  with 
the  maternal  impulse.  But,  although  it  is  not  in  itself 
an  altruistic  impulse  and  is  not  in  any  sense  the  root  of 
altruism,  it  is  a most  valuable  adjunct  to  the  tender 
emotion  in  the  formation  of^ajtruistic  sentiments  and  in 
stimulating  social  co-operation  for  social  ends.  The 
man  that  has  it  not  at  all,  or  in  whom  it  has  become 
completely  specialised  (/.^.,  directed  to  some  one  or  few 
persons  only),  will  hardly  become  a leader  and  inspirer 
of  others  in  the  reform  of  social  abuses,  in  the  public 
recognition  of  merit,  in  public  expression  of  moral 
indignation,  or  in  any  other  of  those  collective 
expressions  of  emotion  which  do  so  much  to  bind 
societies  together,  even  if  they  fail  of  achieving  their 
immediate  ends. 

^ It  is  only  when  this  active  sympathy  is  specialised 
and  is  combined  in  both  parties  with  a reciprocal 
sentiment  of  affection,  and  when  each,  knowing  that  the 
other  desires  his  sympathy  and  derives  from  it  increase 
of  joy  and  diminution  of  pain,  desires  to  procure  these 
results  for  the  other  and  in  turn  derives  satisfaction 
from  the  knowledge  thaf  he  can  and  does  produce 
these  results — it  is  only  then  that  sympathy,  in  the 
fullest  sense  of  the  word,  is  achieved. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  AND  OF 
THE  SELF-REGARDING  SENTIMENT 

pT  F we  would  understand  the  life  of  societies,  we  must 
i first  learn  to  understand  the  way  in  which  in- 
idividuals  become  moulded  by  the  society  into  which 
I they  are  born  and  in  which  they  grow  up,  how  by  this 
•moulding  they  become  fitted  to  play  their  part  in  it 
as  social  beings — how,  in  short,  they  become  capable  of 
.moral  conduct.  Moral  conduct  is  essentially  social  con- 
duct, and  there  could  be  no  serious  objection  to  the  use 
of  the  two  expressions  as  synonymous  ; but  it  is  more 
*in  conformity  with  common  usage  to  restrict  the  term 
“ moral  ” to  the  higher  forms  of  social  conduct  of  which 
man  alone  is  capable. 

While  the  lower  forms  of  social  conduct  are  the  direct 
issue  of  the  prompting  of  instinct — as  when  the  animal- 
mother  suffers  privation,  wounds,  or  death  in  the  defence 
of  her  young  under  the  impulse  of  the  maternal  instinct 
I — the  higher  forms  of  social  conduct,  which  alone  are 
j usually  regarded  as  moral,  involve  the  voluntary  control 
j and  regulation  of  the  instinctive  impulses.  Now,  volition 
. voluntary  control  proceeds  from  the  idea  of  the  self 
and  from  the  sentiment,  or  organised  system  of  emotions 
I and  impulses,  centred  about  that  idea.  Hence  the 
j study  of  the  development  of  self-consciousness  and  of 

174 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  175 


the  self-regarding  sentiment  is  an  important  part  of  the 
preparation  for  the  understanding  of  social  phenomena. 
And  these  two  things,  the  idea  of  the  self  and  the  self- 
regarding  sentiment,  develop  in  such  intimate  relations 
with  each  other  that^they  must  be  studied  together. 
This  development  is,  as  we  shall  see,  essentially  a social 
process,  one  which  is  dependent  throughout  upon  the 
complex  interactions  between  the  individual  and  the 
organised  society  to  which  he  belongs, 
t) Almost  all  animals  are  capable  in  some  degree  of 
learning  to  modify  their  instinctive  behaviour  in  the 
light  of  experience,  under  the  guidance  of  pleasure  and 
pain  ; and  in  the  young  child  also  this  kind  of  learning 
leads  to  the  first  steps  beyond  purely  instinctive  be- 
haviour. At  first,  all  efforts  and  movements  of  the 
young  infant  or  young  animal,  in  so  far  as  they  are 
not  mere  reflexes,  are  directly  and  wholly  due  to  the 
instinctive  impulses.  When  any  such  movement  directly 
attains  its  end,  the  pleasure  of  satisfaction  confirms  the 
tendency  to  that  particular  kind  of  action  in  relation  to 
that  kind  of  object  or  situation.  If,  on  the  other  hand, 
movements  of  the  kind  first  made  are  not  successful, 
the  pain  of  failure  brings  them  to  an  end ; but  the 
impulse  persists  and  some  variation  of  the  movements 
is  made,  again  and  again,  until  success  is  achieved  ; then 
the  pleasure  of  satisfaction  confirms  this  last  and 
successful  kind  of  movement,  so  that,  whenever  the 
same  impulse  is  again  excited,  it  will  work  towards  its 
end  by  means  of  this  kind  of  action  rather  than  by 
means  of  any  other.  Few  of  the^nimals  rise  to  higher 
modes  of  learning  or  acquisition,  'i^ut  in  the  infant,  as 
his  powers  of  representation  develop,  as  he  becomes 
capable  of  free  ideas,  the  end  towards  which  any  instinct 
impels  him  becomes  more  or  less  clearly  represented  in 
his  mind  as  an  object  of  desire,  ^^he  first  result  of  this 


176 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


transformation  of  blind  appetite  or  impulse  into  desire 
is  greater  continuity  of  effort ; for,  when  the  power  of 
representatioii  ^.of . the  object  has  been  attained,  the 
attention  is  not  so  readily  drawn  off  from  it  by  irrelevant 
sensory  impressions  of  all  sorts, 

iii/Then,  as  the  child’s  intellectual  powers  develop 
further,  the  train  of  activity  through  which  the  end  of 
any  impulse  is  attained  becomes  longer;  a succession  of 
actions  is  performed,  each  of  which  is  only  a means 
to  the  end  prescribed  by  the  instinctive  impulse ; objects 
that  are  in  themselves  uninteresting  are  made  use  of  as 
means  to  the  end.  In  all  such  mediate  activities  the 
original  impulse  persists  as  the  motive  power  of  the 
whole  sequence.  In  so  far  as  the  actions  and  objects 
made  use  of  do  not  bring  him  nearer  to  his  end,  they 
are  discarded ; he  turns  to  others,  until  he  finds  those 
by  means  of  which  success  is  attainable.  When,  there- 
after, a similar  situation  recurs,  this  last  sequence  of 
actions  and  objects  is  the  one  brought  into  play. 

The  principle  that  the  original  impulse  or  conation 
supplies  the  motive  power  to  all  the  activities  that  are 
but  means  to  the  attainment  of  the  desired  end — this 
principle  is  of  supreme  importance  for  the  understanding 
of  the  mental  life  and  conduct  of  men.  The  train  of 


activity, : 

may  become  in  this  way  indefinitely  prolonged  and 
incessantly  renewed  ; it  may  lakg:  „tbe. ..predominantly 
intellectual  form  of  thinking  out  means  for  the  attain- 
ment of  the  end. 

This  complication  of  purely  instinctive  behaviour  in 
the  developing  child  may  be  illustrated  by  a concrete 
example.  Suppose  that  a hungry  young  child  has  by 
chance  found  something  good  to  eat  in  a certain  cup- 
board that  has  been  left  open.  On  the  next  occasion 
that  he  comes  hungry  within  sight  of  the  cupboard,  he 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  177 


may  at  once  turn  to  and  help  himself  to  food.  So 
much  profiting  by  experience  any  of  the  higher  animals 
may  display.  Next  suppose  that  the  child  finds  himself 
hungry  while  in  another  part  of  the  house.  The  idea 
of  the  cupboard  and  of  the  food  in  it  rises  to  conscious- 
ness, and  he  goes  off  to  find  it  and  to  repeat  his 
successful  raid.  Again,  suppose  that  on  another  similar 
occasion  he  finds  on  reaching  the  cupboard  that  it  is 
latched  and  that  the  latch  is  out  of  his  reach.  He  goes 
and  fetches  a footstool,  but  still  he  cannot  reach  the 
latch.  Perhaps  then  the  obstruction  to  his  conation 
excites  his  anger  and  leads  to  a violent  assault  upon 
the  door ; the  assault  may  be  maintained  until  his 
baffled  anger  gives  way  to  despair,  his  efforts  relax,  and 
he  weeps.  But,  if  he  is  an  intelligent  child,  he  may  turn 
away  from  the  footstool  and  drag  up  a chair  and  then, 
reaching  the  latch,  secure  the  desired  food.  All  this 
train  of  varied  activity  is  maintained  by  the  one  original 
hunger-impulse;  the  means  necessary  for  the  attainment 
of  the  end  are  sought  as  eagerly  as  the  food,  the  object 
capable  of  directly  satisfying  the  impulse ; the  energy 
of  the  original  hunger-impulse  imparts  itself  to  all  the 
mediating  actions  found  necessary  for  its  satisfaction. 
And,  on  the  recurrence  of  a similar  situation,  the  child 
will  go  at  once  to  seek  the  necessary  chair,  neglecting 
the  footstool ; for  the  pleasure  of  success  has  confirmed 
this  tendency,  and  the  pain  of  failure  has  destroyed  the 
tendency  to  seek  the  ineffectual  footstool. 

Now  imagine  a further  complication.  Suppose  that, 
just  as  the  child  is  about  to  seize  the  food  he  desires, 
some  harsh  elder  discovers  him  and  severely  punishes 
him  by  shutting  him  up  in  a dark  room  where  he  suffers 
an  agony  of  fear.  On  the  next  recurrence  of  the  situa- 
tion, the  hunger-impulse  drives  him  on  as  before  until, 
perhaps,  he  hears  in  the  distance  the  voice  of  the  person 

N 


178 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


who  punished  him.  This  brings  to  his  mind  the  idea 
of  that  person  and  this  idea  re-excites  the  fear  induced 
by  the  punishment ; or,  more  probably,  the  sound  of  the 
voice  directly  excites  the  fear-impulse  in  the  way  we 
considered  in  Chapter  II.  There  then  takes  place  a 
conflict  between  the  impulse  to  withdraw  and  the 
hunger-impulse  ; the  former  proving  stronger  and  over- 
coming the  latter,  he  runs  away  and  conceals  himself; 
presently  the  fear  dies  away,  the  idea  of  the  desired 
object  recurs  and  restores  the  original  impulse,  which 
then  attains  its  end. 

Such  a brute  conflict  of  impulses  is  characteristic  of 
conation  on  the  purely  perceptual  level  of  mental  life. 
A rather  higher  stage  is  reached  when  the  two  impulses 
persist  side  by  side,  and  in  spite  of  fear,  which  keeps 
him  ready  to  flee  at  the  least  noise,  the  boy  steals  towards 
his  object,  taking  every  precaution  against  being  seen  or 
heard.  In  this  case  the  two  impulses  co-operate  in 
determining  each  step  in  the  sequence  of  actions,  the 
one,  the  desire  for  food,  predominating,  the  other  merely 
modifying  the  way  in  which  its  end  is  attained.  The 
state  of  affective  consciousness  accompanying  the  actions 
that  proceed  from  the  co-operation  of  the  two  impulses 
is  complex;  it  is  not  simply  desire  of  food,  and  it  is  not 
simply  fear,  nor  is  it  merely  a rapid  alternation  of  these 
two  states,  but  rather  an  imperfect  fusion  of  the  two  for 
\ ’ *:h  we  have  no  name. 


ehaviour  of  this  kind  may  imply  but  a minimum  of 
self-consciousness.  It  does  not  necessarily  imply  that 
the  child  has  any  idea  or  representation  of  himself 
suffering  punishment  or  of  the  punishment  itself.  There 
are,  no  doubt,  even  in  civilised  communities,  individuals 
of  low  type,  brought  up  under  unfavourable  circum- 
stances, whose  behaviour  hardly  rises  above  this  level. 
Whatever  power  of  conceptual  thought  such  a being 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  179 


attains  is  exercised  merely  in  the  immediate  service  of 
desire  springing  directly  from  some  one  or  other  of  the 
primary  instinctive  impulses  ; he  may  display  a certain 
cunning  in  the  pursuit  of  his  ends  and  may  form  certain 
habits  in  the  service  of  these  impulses,  perhaps  an 
habitual  caution  in  the  presence  of  strangers,  an  habitual 
brutality  towards  those  of  whom  he  has  no  fear.  He 
has  no  sense  of  responsibility  or  duty  or  obligation,  no 
ideal  of  self ; he  has  but  rudimentary  sentiments  in 
regard  to  himself  or  others,  has  no  character,  whether 
good  or  bad,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word,  and, 
therefore,  is  incapable  of  true  volition.  In  the  case 
of  behaviour  on  this  comparatively  low  level,  it  is  easy 
to  understand  that  the  instinctive  impulses  are  the 
primary  springs  of  all  activities,  and  that  the  pains  and 
pleasures  experienced  in  the  course  of  these  activities 
merely  serve  to  modify  the  actions  motived  by  these 
impulses  and  thereby  to  shape  the  habits  acquired  in 
the  service  of  them./ Such  behaviour  may  be  called 
non-moral ; it  can  no  more  be  made  the  subject  of  moral 
judgments  than  the  behaviour  of  animals. 

<AiL  the  other  end  of  the  scale  of  conduct  is  the  man 
all  of  whose  actions  are  either  the  direct  issue  of  voli- 
tions or  the  outcome  of  habits  that  are  the  secondary 
results  of  volitions  or  at  least  have  been  deliberately 
shaped,  restrained  here,  encouraged  there,  by  volitional 
control.  Instead  of  acting  at  once  upon  each  impulse, 
instead  of  striving  to  realise  each  desired  end,  such  a 
man  often  resists,  if  he  cannot  altogether  suppress,  his 
strongest  desires,  and  acts  in  direct  opposition  to  them  ; 
his  conduct  does  not  seem  to  be  the  issue  of  a mere 
conflict  of  desires,  the  stronger  one  prevailing  ; he  often 
seems  to  act,  not  in  the  line  of  least  resistance,  but  in  the 
line  of  greatest  resistance ; the  motives  from  which  he 
acts  may  be,  as  facts  of  immediate  experience,  as  feel- 


i8o 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


ings,  emotions,  conations,  much  less  intense  than  the 
strong  feelings,  emotions,  and  desires  whose  promptings 
he  resists. 

How  does  it  become  possible  for  a man  thus  to  act  in 
the  line  of  greatest  resistance,  to  make  the  feebler  pre- 
vail over  the  stronger  desire  ? 1 1 is  the  capacity  for  this 

kind  of  action  that  gives  the  highest  moral  conduct  the 
appearance  of  being  uncaused,  the  outcome  of  a free 
will,  in  the  sense  of  a will  not  proceeding  from  antece- 
dent conditions  in  the  constitution  of  the  individual, 
^uch  conduct  raises  the  problem  of  the  will  in  its  most 
difficult  form. 

The  child  has  to  pass  gradually  in  the  course  of  its 
development  from  that  lowest  stage  of  behaviour  to  this 
highest  stage ; and  we  must  gain  some  understanding  of 
this  genesis  of  the  higher  conduct  out  of  the  lower, 
before  we  can  hope  to  understand  the  nature  of  volition 
and  its  conditions  and  effects  in  the  life  of  societies. 
The  Dassag£_ia.-effected  bv  the  development  of  self- 
consciousness.  of  the  sentiments,  and  of  character.  And 
it  is  only  when  we  trace  the  growth  of  self-consciousness 
that  we  can  understand  how  it  comes  to  play  its  part  in 
determining  conduct  of  the  kind  that  alone  renders 
possible  the  complex  life  of  highly  organised  societies. 
For  we  find  that  the  idea  of  the  self  and  the  self-regard- 
ing sentiment  are  essentially  social  products  ; that  their 
development  is  effected  by  constant  interplay  between 
personalities,  between  the  self  and  society ; that,  for 
this  reason,  the  complex  conception  of  self  thus  attained 
implies  constant  reference  to  others  and  to  society  in 
general,  and  is,  in  fact,  not  merely  a conception  of  self, 
but  always  of  one’s  self  in  relation  to  other  selves. 
This  social  genesis  of  the  idea  of  self  lies  at  the  root 
of  morality,  and  it  was  largely  because  this  social  origin 
and  character  of  the  idea  of  self  was  ignored  by  so  many 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  i8i 


of  the  older  moralists  that  they  were  driven  to  postulate 
a special  moral  faculty,  the  conscience  or  moral  instinct. 
/ We  may  roughly  distinguish  four,  levels  of  conduct| 
successive  stages.  <^,ch.^Ljwhfoh-  be_traver^^^ 
every  individual  before  he  can  .ati^in  the  next  highe 


These  are  (i)  the  stage  of  instinctive  behavioui| 
modified  only  by  the  influence  of  the  pains  and  pleasure^ 
that  are  incidentally  experienced  in  the  course  of  in^ 
stinctive  activities ; (2)  the  stage  in  which  the  operation! 
of  the  instinctive  impulses  is  modified  by  the  influenc^ 
of  rewards  and  punishments  administered  more  or  les^ 
systematically  by  the  social  environment ; (3)  the  stage 
in  which  conduct  is  controlled  in  the  main  by  the  antici- 
pation of  social  praise  and  blame  ; (4)  the  highest  stage, 
in  which  conduct  is  regulated  by  an  ideal  of  conduct 
that  enables  a man  to  act  in  the  way  that  seems  to  him 
right  regardless  of  the  praise  or  blame  of  his  immediate 
social  environment. 

The  word  “self”  or  “ ego”  is  used  in  several  different 
senses  in  philosophical  discourse,  the  clearest  and  most 
important  of  these  being  the  self  as  logical  subject  and 
the  empirical  self.  In  considering  the  genesis  of  moral 
conduct  and  character,  we  need  concern  ourselves  with 
the  empirical  self  only.  We  may  have  a conception  of 
the  self  as  a substantial  or  enduring  psychical  entity  or 
soul  whose  states  are  our  states  of  consciousness.  Or 
we  may  hold  that,  by  the  very  nature  of  our  thought 
and  language,  we  are  logically  compelled  to  conceive, 
and  to  speak  of,  the  self  as  one  pole  of  the  subject-object 
relation  in  terms  of  which  alone  we  are  able  to  describe 
our  cognitive  experience,  the  knowing  or  being  aware 
of  anything.  But  such  conceptions  are  products  of 
reflexion  arrived  at  comparatively  late,  if  at  all,  in  the 
process  of  individual  mental  development,  long  after 
the  complex  conception  of  the  empirical  self  has  been 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


182 

formed  through  a multitude  of  experiences  of  a less 
reflective  character.  Those  other  conceptions  of  the 
self  are  of  importance  from  our  present  point  of  view 
only  in  so  far  as  they  are  taken  up  into,  and  become 
part  of,  the  empirical  conception  of  the  self,  /ifhus  if  a 
man  believes  that  he  has,  or  is,  a substantial  soul  that 
can  continue  to  enjoy  consciousness  after  the  death  of 
the  body,  that  belief  is  a feature  of  his  total  conception 
of  his  self  which  may,  and  of  course  often  does,  pro- 
foundly influence  his  conduct.  But  it  is  a feature  of 
the  empirical  self  of  a certain  number  of  persons  only, 
and  is  not  a part  of  the  empirical  self  of  others  ; nor  is 
it  a part  essential  to  moral  conduct  of  the  highest  order, 
as  we  know  from  many  instances.  vW e have  briefly  to 
trace  the  genesis  of  the  idea  of  the  empirical  seisin  so 
far  as  it  is  common  to  all  normally  constituted  men ; 
and  in  doing  so  we  shall  follow  in  the  main  the  descrip- 
tion of  the  process  recently  worked  out  by  several 
writers,  notably  by  Professors  Baldwin  and  Royce. 

(l)  The  child’s  first  step  in  this  direction  is  to  learn  to 
distinguish  the  objects  of  the  external  world  as  things 
existing  independently  of  himself.  How  this  step  is 
achieved  w’e  need  not  stop  to  inquire,  /feut  we  must 
note  that  all  those  features  of  the  child’s  experience  that 
are  not  thus  extruded  or  referred  to  a world  of  external 
reality  remain  to  constitute  the  nucleus  of  his  idea  of 
himself.  The  parts  of  his  body,  especially  his  limbs, 
play  a very  peculiar  and  important  part  in  this  process, 
because  they  are  presented  in  consciousness  sometimes 
as  things  of  the  outer  world,  as  parts  of  the  not-self, 
sometimes — when  they  are  the  seats  of  pain,  discomfort, 
heat  or  cold,  or  muscular  sensations — as  parts  of  the  self. 
Thus  the  conception  of  the  bodily  self  is  in  large  part 
dependent  on  the  development  of  the  conception  of 
things  as  persistent  realities  of  the  external  world  /^nd 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  183 


the  conception  of  those  things  is  in  turn  completed  by 
the  projection  into  it  of  the  idea  of  the  self  as  a centre 
of  efifort  a cause  of  movement  and  of  resistance  to  pres- 
sure. ^t  is  helpful  to  try  to  imagine  how  far  the  idea 
of  the  self  could  develop  in  a human  being  of  normal 
native  endowment,  if  it  were  possible  for  him  to  grow  up 
from  birth  onward  in  a purely  physical  environment, 
deprived,  that  is  to  say,  of  both  human  and  animal 
companionship.  It  would  seem  that  under  these  con- 
ditions he  could  achieve  at  best  but  a very  rudimentary 
and  crude  idea  of  the  self.  It  would  be  little  more  than 
a bodily  self,  which  would  be  distinguished  from  other 
physical  objects  chiefly  by  its  constant  presence  and  by 
reason  of  the  special  interest  that  would  attach  to  it  as 
the  seat  of  various  pains.  There  would  be  a thread  of 
continuity  or  sameness  supplied  by  the  mass  of  organic 
sensations  arising  from  the  internal  organs  and  constitut- 
ing what  is  called  the  coensesthesia  ; and  still  more  inti- 
mate and  fundamental  constituents  of  the  empirical  self 
would  be  the  primary  emotions,  the  conations,  pleasures, 
and  pains.  The  solitary  individual's  idea  of  self  could 
hardly  surpass  this  degree  of  complexity  ; for  the  further 
development  of  self-consciousness  is  wholly  a social 
process. 

At  first  the  child  fails  to  make  a distinction  between 
the  two  classes  of  objects  that  make  up  his  external 
world,  his  not-self,  namely,  persons  and  inanimate 
objects.  In  the  first  months  of  life  his  attention  is 
predominantly  drawn  to  persons,  at  first  cnerely  because 
they  are  the  objects  that  most  frequently  move  and 
emit  sounds,  later  because  they  bring  him  relief  from 
hunger  and  other  discomforts.  He  therefore  learns  to 
take  interest  in  these  moving  objects,  he  watches  them, 
he  is  soothed  by  their  presence  and  distressed  by  their 
absence ; and  very  early  the  mere  sound  of  the  mother's 


184 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


voice  may  still  his  crying,  bringing  anticipatory  satisfac- 
tion of  his  needs.  Very  early  also  the  expressions, 
especially  the  smile,  on  the  faces  of  other  persons  and 
the  cries  of  other  children  excite  in  him  as  purely 
instinctive  reactions  similar  expressions,  which  are 
doubtless  accompanied  in  some  degree  by  the  appro- 
priate feelings  and  emotions ; in  this  way  he  learns 
to  understand  in  terms  of  his  own  experience  the 
expressions  of  others,  learns  to  attribute  to  them  the 
feelings  and  emotions  he  himself  experiences.  He  finds 
also  that  things  resist  his  efforts  at  movement  in  very 
various  degrees  and  that  they  forcibly  impress  move- 
ments on  his  limbs,  ^o  he  comes  to  assume  implicitly 
in  his  behaviour  towards  things  of  the  external  world 
the  capacities  of  feeling  and  effort,  of  emotion  and 
sympathetic  response,  that  he  himself  repeatedly  ex- 
.periences.  y^nanimate  objects  are  at  first  conceived 
I after  the  same  pattern  as  persons,  and  only  in  the 
1 course  of  some  years  does  he  gradually  learn  to  dis- 
tinguish clearly  between  persons  and  things,  divesting 
his  idea  of  inanimate  things  little  by  little,  but  never, 
perhaps,  completely,  of  the  personal  attributes,  the 
capacities  for  feeling  and  effort,  which  he  recognises 
in  himself.  His  treatment  of  inert  things  as  beings 
'possessed  of  personal  attributes  shows  clearly  that  his 
jideas  of  things  in  general  are  bound  up  with,  and 
'coloured  by,  his  rudimentary  idea  of  his  self  as  a being 
capable  of  feeling  and  effort,  and  that  his  idea  of  his  self 
jis  not  at  first  the  idea  of  a merely  bodily  self  fashioned 
after  ideas  of  inert  objects. 

As  the  differentiation  of  persons  and  inert  objects 
proceeds,  persons  continue  to  be  the  more  interesting 
to  the  young  child,  for  they  continue  to  be  the  main 
sources  of  his  pains  and  pleasures  and  satisfactions. 
His  attention  is  constantly  directed  towards  them,  and 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  185 


he  begins  to  imitate  their  behaviour.  He  finds  that 
they  do  many  things  he  cannot  do,  but  would  like  to 
do ; and  often  he  tends  to  do  as  they  do  simply  because 
their  actions  arrest  his  attention  and  so  give  direction  to 
the  outflow  of  his  abundant  motor  energies.  But  much 
more  important  than  the  actions  of  the  people  about 
him  are  the  feelings  and  emotions  that  prompt  them. 
The  child  soon  learns  that  he  can  play  upon  these  to  a 
certain  extent  and  so  acquires  an  interest  in  under- 
standing the  attitudes  of  others  towards  himself.  He 
widens  his  experience  and  his  understanding  of  the 
emotional  attitudes  and  motives  of  others  by  copying 
them  in  his  imitative  play  ; he  puts  himself  into  some 
personal  relation  he  has  observed,  assumes  the  part  of 
parent  or  teacher  or  elder  sister,  makes  some  smaller 
child,  a dog,  a cat,  or  a doll,  stand  for  himself,  and  acts 
out  his  part,  so  realising  more  fully  the  meaning  of  the 
behaviour  of  other  persons.  In  this  way  the  content  of 
his  idea  of  his  self  and  of  its  capacities  for  action  and 
feeling  grows  hand  in  hand  with  his  ideas  of  other 
selves ; features  of  other  selves,  whether  capacities  for 
bodily  action  or  emotional  expression,  having  first  been 
observed  without  understanding  of  their  inner  signifi- 
cance, are  translated  into  personal  experience,  which  is 
then  read  back  into  the  other  selves,  giving  richer 
meaning  to  their  actions  and  expressions. 

^<^nd  it  is  not  only  in  play  that  this  imitation  of,  and 
consequent  fuller  realisation  of  the  meaning  of,  the 
behaviour  of  others  goes  on.  is  carried  out  also  in 
the  serious  relations  of  daily  life,  as  when  the  little  girl 
of  five  or  six  years  talks  to,  plays  with,  comforts,  or 
reproves  a younger  child  in  almost  exact  imitation  of 
her  mother. 

/In  this  way  the  child’s  idea  of  his  self  early  comes  to 
be  the  idea,  not  merely  of  his  body  and  of  certain 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


1 86 

bodily  and  mental  capacities,  but  also  of  a system  of 
relations  between  his  self  and  other  selves.  Now,  the 
attitudes  of  other  persons  towards  him  are  more  or  less 
freely  expressed  by  them  in  praise,  reproof,  gratitude, 
reproach,  anger,  pleasure  or  displeasure,  and  so  forth. 
Hence,  as  he  rapidly  acquires  insight  into  the  meaning 
of  these  attitudes,  he  constantly  sees  himself  in  the 
reflected  light  of  their  ideas  and  feelings  about  him,  a 
light  that  colours  all  his  idea  of  his  self  and  plays  a 
great  part  in  building  up  and  shaping  that  idea ; that 
is  to  say,  he  gets  his  idea  of  his  self  in  large  part  by 
accepting  the  ideas  of  himself  that  he  finds  expressed 
by  those  about  him.  The  process  is  well  illustrated  by 
the  case  of  the  unfortunate  child  who  is  constantly 
scolded  and  told  that  he  is  a naughty  boy.*  Under 
these  conditions  the  normal  child  very  soon  accepts 
these  oft-repeated  suggestions,  learns  to  regard  himself 
as  a naughty  boy,  and  plays  the  part  thus  assigned 
to  him.  Similarly,  if  he  finds  himself  constantly  re- 
garded as  clever,  or  irresistibly  charming,  or  in  any 
other  light,  he  can  hardly  fail  to  regard  himself  in  the 
same  way,  and  the  idea  of  his  self  moulded  in  this 
way  by  his  social  environment  affects  his  conduct 
accordingly. 

-^he  child’s  self-consciousness  is,  then,  nourished  and 
moulded  by  the  reflection  of  himself  that  he  finds  in  the 
minds  of  his  fellows.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  point 
out  that  this  is  true,  not  only  of  the  mental  but  also  of 
the  bodily  self ; each  of  us  gets  some  idea,  more  or  less 
accurate,  of  his  bodily  appearance  to  others,  a process  in 
which  civilised  folk  are  greatly  aided  by  the  use  of  the 
mirror.  The  vain  person  is  one  who  is  constantly 
preoccupied  with  this  idea  of  his  bodily  or  total 
appearance  in  the  eyes  of  others,  and  who  never 
* C/.  Kipling’s  story,  “ Baa-baa,  Black  Sheep.” 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  187 


achieves  so  stable  an  estimate  of  himself,  his  powers, 
and  appearance  as  to  be  indifferent  to  the  regards  of 
casual  acquaintances. 

We  are  now  in  a position  to  consider  the  transition 
from  the  second  to  the  third  stage  of  conduct,  from  that 
£ in  which  conduct  is  regulated  chiefly  by  the  expectation 
of  rewards  and  punishments,  and  in  which  the  subject's 
attitude  in  controlling  any  impulse  is  expressed  by  the 
phrase,  I must  or  must  not  do  this,  to  that  in  which 
the  mere  expectation  of  social  praise  or  blame  suffices 
to  regulate  conduct. 

gj'  The  oppositions  and  prohibitions  that  a child  en- 
^ counters  in  his  social  relations  are  not  less  important 
for  the  development  of  his  personality  than  his  sympa- 
thetic apprehension  of  the  mental  states  of  others. 
They  serve  especially  to  define  and  consolidate  his 
ideas  of  his  self  and  of  other  selves.  When,  for 
example,  his  desire  to  perform  some  particular  action 
meets  some  personal  opposition  that  his  best  efforts 
fail  to  break  down,  and  especially  if  such  insuperable 
opposition  is  consistently  and  unfailingly  forthcoming, 
he  gets  both  a more  vivid  idea  of  the  personality  of  his 
opponent  and  a fuller  sense  of  the  social  import  of  his 
own  actions.  And  with  his  earliest  experience  of  law, 
in  the  form  of  general  prohibitions  upheld  by  all 
members  of  his  social  environment,  the  child  makes  a 
further  step  in  each  of  these  directions.  It  is  generally 
necessary  that  law  shall  be  enforced  at  first  by  physical 
strength,  and  that  his  regard  for  it  shall  be  encouraged 
by  physical  punishment ; /for  the  first  step  towards 
moral  cqndu^^^  the  controL.pf  the  im mediate., 
and  fean  of  punishment  can  secure  this  control  of  the 
immediate  impulse  by  a mgre , remote  motive.  at_arL 
earlier  age  than  it  can  otherwise  be  effected^  fear  being 
the  great  inhibitor  of  action.  Law  takes  at  first  the 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


1 88 

form  of  specific  prohibition  of  some  particular  kind  of 
action,  and  by  punishment  the  child  is  taught  to  hold 
himself  accountable  for  any  action  of  that  kind.  By  the 
extension  of  rules  in  number  and  generality  his  sense  of 
accountability  to  others  is  extended,  and  he  is  taught  to 
conceive  himself  more  and  more  clearly  as  an  agent  in 
fixed  relations  to  other  agents,  as  a member  of  a social 
system  in  which  he  has  a defined  position ; and  the 
habit  of  control,  and  of  reflection  before  action,  is  thus 
initiated.  In  all  this  a child  is  in  all  probability 
recapitulating  the  history  of  social  evolution,  which,  it 
would  seem,  must  have  begun  by  the  enforcement  by 
the  community,  or  by  the  strongest  member  of  it,  of 
rules  of  conduct  upon  each  member,  rules  which  in 
primitive  societies  were  probably  prescribed  by  rigid 
customs  of  unknown  origin  rather  than  by  the  will  oi 
caprice  of  individuals. 

I But  social  conduct  founded  only  upon  the  fear  of 

I punishment,  on  the  sense  of  accountability,  and  on  the 
habits  formed  under  their  influence,  is  the  conduct  of  a 
slave.  It  can  hardly  be  called  moral,  even  if  laws  are 
never  broken  and  all  prohibitions  and  injunctions  are 
observed.  And,  though  the  sense  of  accountability 
founded  on  fear  of  punishment  may  effectively  prevent 
breaches  of  the  law,  it  is  of  but  little  effect  in  promoting 
positive  well-doing. 

Why  is  our  conduct  so  profoundly  influenced  by 
public  opinion  ? How  do  we  come  to  care  so  much  for 
the  praise  and  blame,  the  approval  and  disapproval,  of 
our  fellow-men  ? This  is  the  principal  problem  that  we 
have  to  solve  if  we  would  understand  how  men  are  led 
to  control  their  impulses  in  a way  that  renders  possible 
the  life  of  complexly  organised  societies.  For  the 
praise  and  blame  of  our  fellows,  especially  as  expressed 
by  the  voice  of  public  opinion,  are  the  principal  and 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  189 


most  effective  sanctions  of  moral  conduct  for  the  great 
mass  of  men  ; without  them  few  of  us  would  rise 
above  the  level  of  mere  law-abidingness,  the  mere 
avoidance  of  acts  on  which  legal  punishment  surely 
follows  ; and  the  strong  regard  for  social  approval  and 
disapproval  constitutes  an  essential  stage  of  the  pro- 
gress to  the  higher  plane  of  morality,  the  plane  of 
obligation  to  an  ideal  of  conduct. 

The  strength  of  the  regard  men  pay  to  public 
opinion,  the  strength  of  their  desire  to  ‘secure  the 
approval  and  avoid  the  disapproval  of  their  fellow-men, 
goes  beyond  all  rational  grounds  ; it  cannot  be  wholly 
explained  as  due  to  regard  for  their  own  actual  welfare 
or  material  prosperity,  or  to  the  anticipation  of  the  pain 
or  the  pleasure  that  would  be  felt  on  hearing  men’s 
blame  or  praise.  For,  as  we  know,  some  men,  other- 
wise rational  and  sane  enough,  are  prepared  to  sacrifice 
ease  and  enjoyments  of  every  kind — in  fact,  all  the  good 
things  of  life — if  only  they  may  achieve  posthumous 
fame  ; that  is  to  say,  their  conduct  is  dominated  by  the 
desire  that  men  shall  admire  or  praise  them  long  after 
they  themselves  shall  have  become  incapable  of  being 
affected  pleasurably  or  painfully  by  any  expression  of 
the  opinions  of  others.  The  great  strength  in  so  many 
men  of  this  regard  for  the  opinions  of  others  and  the 
almost  universal  distribution  of  it  in  some  degree  may, 
then,  fairly  be  said  to  present  the  most  important  and 
difficult  of  the  psychological  problems  that  underlie 
the  theory  of  morals.  Some  of  the  moralists  have 
simply  ignored  this  problem,  with  the  result  that  their 
moralising  is  largely  vitiated  and  made  unreal.  It  is 
perhaps  worth  while  to  consider  an  example  of  pro- 
cedure of  this  kind,  provided  by  a very  respectable 
writer  on  morals;  the  late  Dr.  T.  Fowler*  wrote: 
‘ In  **  Progressive  Morality.’' 


190 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


‘‘  Human  nature,  in  its  normal  conditions,  is  so  consti- 
tuted that  the  remorse  felt,  when  we  look  back  upon  a 
wrong  action,  far  outweighs  any  pleasure  we  may  have 
derived  from  it,  just  as  the  satisfaction  with  which  we 
look  back  upon  a right  action  far  more  than  compen- 
sates for  any  pain  with  which  it  may  have  been 
attended.”  The  author  went  on  to  say  that  these  pains 
and  pleasures  of  reflection  on  our  past  actions  are  more 
intense  than  any  other  pains  and  pleasures,  and  he 
proposed  to  regard  them  as  the  moral  sanction.  Ac- 
cording to  this  author’s  view  all  moral  conduct  arises, 
then,  from  an  enlightened  and  nicely  calculating  hedon- 
ism ; for  he  represents  the  strongest  motives  to  right 
conduct  as  being  the  desire  of  this  greatest  pleasure  and 
the  aversion  from  this  greatest  pain. 

This  is  a fair  example  of  the  procedure  of  a moralist 
who  has  got  beyond  the  old-fashioned  popular  doctrine 
of  the  conscience  as  a mysterious  faculty  that  tells  us 
what  is  right  and  what  is  wrong  and  impels  us  to 
pursue  the  right,  but  who  lacks  psychological  insight. 
Of  course,  if  the  statement  quoted  above  were  true,  the 
moralist  would  be  justified  in  simply  recognising  the 
fact  and  in  leaving  it  to  the  psychologist  to  explain,  if 
he  could,  how  human  nature  had  acquired  this  remark- 
able constitution.  But  the  statement  is  in  direct  oppo- 
sition to  notorious  facts,  and  in  reducing  all  morality  to 
hedonism  it  grossly  libels  human  nature.  The  finest 
moral  acts  do  not  proceed  from  this  desire  of  the 
pleasure  of  self-satisfied  retrospection,  nor  from  the 
aversion  from  the  pain  of  remorse.  When  the  patriot 
volunteers  for  the  forlorn  hope  and  goes  to  certain 
death,  he  cannot  be  seeking  the  pleasures  of  retro- 
spective self-approval,  and  it  would  be  absurd  to 
suppose  that  he  is  driven  on  only  by  fear  of  remorse. 
"Strong  and  fine  characters,  when  forming  their  decisions 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  191 


pay  little  or  no  regard  to  the  prospect  of  these  pleasures  J 
and  pains  of  retrospection ; while  in  the  n;ass  of  men , 
the  pain  of  remorse  for  undetected  lapses  from  morality 
is  easily  avoided  or  got  rid  of,  and  the  pleasure  of  self- 
approval for  virtues  unknown  to  others  is  comparatively 
slight.  The  most  that  can  be  admitted  is  that  in  certain 
morbidly  conscientious  persons  the  prospect  of  these 
retrospective  pleasures  and  pains  may  play  some  part  in 
regulating  conduct ; and  it  may  be  added  that,  if  we 
were  called  upon  to  advise  in  the  designing  of  a new 
type  of  human  nature,  we  might  be  tempted  to  recom- 
mend that  it  should  be  constituted  in  this  way,  if  only 
for  the  reason  that  justice  would  be  so  admirably 
served ; for  each  right  or  wrong  act  would  then  in- 
evitably bring  its  own  internal  reward  of  pleasure  or 
punishment  of  pain,  as  the  nursery  moralists,  regardless 
of  truth,  have  so  often  asserted  that  it  does.  Such  a 
constitution  of  human  nature  would  then  obviate  the 
irreparable  injustices  of  this  life  which,  human  nature 
being  what  it  is,  constitute  its  darkest  feature,  and  for 
which  in  every  age  men  have  sought  to  provide  a remedy 
in  some  system  of  external  rewards  and  punishments 
that  shall  be  distributed  in  this  life  or  another. 

We  cannot,  then,  consent  to  escape  the  difficulty  of 
this  problem  by  accepting  any  such  false  assumption  as 
to  the  normal  constitution  of  human  nature,  but  must 
seek  its  solution  in  the  development  of  the  self-regarding 
sentiment.  

There  are  two  principal  varieties  of  the  self-regarding 
sentiment,  which  we  may  distinguish  by  the  names 
and  self-respect.”  No  sharp  line  can  be  drawn 
between  them,  unless  we  restrict  the  name  ‘‘pride  ” to  one 
extreme  type  of  the  sentiment  that  is  but  rarely  met 
with  ; in  popular  speech  the  forms  of  self-respect  that 
approximate  to  this  type  are  commonly  called  pride. 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


192 

Pride,  taking  the  word  in  the  narrow  and  strict  sense,  Is 
a simpler  sentiment  than  self-respect,  and  we  may  with 
advantage  consider  it  first. 

Imagine  the  son  of  a powerful  and  foolish  prince  to 
be  endowed  with  great  capacities  and  to  have  in  great 
strength  the  instinct  of  self-display  with  its  emotion  of 
positive  self-feeling.  Suppose  that  he  is  never  checked, 
or  corrected,  or  criticised,  but  is  allowed  to  lord  it  over 
all  his  fellow-creatures  without  restraint.  The  self- 
regarding  sentiment  of  such  a child  would  almost 
necessarily  take  the  form  of  an  unshakable  pride,  a 
pride  constantly  gratified  by  the  attitudes  of  deference, 
gratitude,  and  admiration,  of  his  social  environment ; 
the  only  dispositions  that  would  become  organised  in 
this  sentiment  of  pride  would  be  those  of  positive  self- 
feeling or  elation  and  of  anger  (for  his  anger  would 
be  invariably  excited  when  any  one  failed  to  assume 
towards  him  the  attitude  of  subjection  or  deference), 
■^lis  self-consciousness  might  be  intense  and  very 
prominent,  but  it  would  remain  poor  in  content ; for  he 
could  make  little  progress  in  self-knowledge  ; he  would 
have  little  occasion  to  hear,  or  to  be  interested  in,  the 
judgments  of  others  upon  himself ; and  he  would  seldom 
be  led  to  reflect  upon  his  own  character  and  conduct, 
'^he  only  influences  that  could  moralise  a man  so 
endowed  and  so  brought  up  would  be  either  religious 
teaching,  which  might  give  him  the  sense  of  a power 
greater  than  himself  to  whom  he  was  accountable,  or  a 
very  strong  natural  endowment  of  the  tender  emotion 
and  its  altruistic  impulse,  or  a conjunction  of  these  two 
influences. 

A man  in  whom  the  self-regarding  sentiment  had 
assumed  this  form  would  be  incapable  of  being  humbled 
— his  pride  could  only  be  mortified  ; that  is  to  say,  any 
display  of  his  own  shortcomings  or  any  demonstration 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  193 


of  the  superiority  of  another  to  himself  could  cause  a 
painful  check  to  his  positive  self-feeling  and  a con- 
sequent anger,  but  could  gjy^ jdse,  nei theT.ta^siiame,,nQr 
to  humiliation,  nor  to  any  affective  state,  such  as 
admiration,  gratitude,  or  reverence,  in  which  negative 
self-feeling  plays  a part.  And  he  would  be  indifferent 
to  moral  praise  or  blame  ; for  the  disposition  of  negative 
self-feeling  would  have  no  place  in  his  self-regarding 
sentiment ; and  negative  self-feeling,  which  renders 
us  observant  of  the  attitudes  of  others  towards  our- 
selves and  receptive  towards  their  opinions,  is  one  of  the 
essential  conditions  of  the  influence  of  praise  and  blame 
upon  us. 

In  many  men  whose  moral  training  has  been  grossly 
defective  the  self-regarding  sentiment  approximates  to 
this  type  of  pure  pride  ; such  men  may  revel  in  the  admi- 
ration, flattery,  and  gratitude  of  others,  but  they  remain 
indifferent  to  moral  approval ; they  may  be  painfully 
affected  by  scorn  or  ridicule,  and  but  little  by  moral 
censure.  And  for  most  of  us  the  admiration  and  the 
scorn  or  ridicule  of  others  remain  stronger  spurs  to  our 
s^lf-feeling  than  praise  or  blame,  and  still  more  so  than 
mere  approval  and  disapproval. 

*^ut  the  self-regarding  sentiment  of  the  man  of 
normally  developed  moral  nature  differs  from  pride  in 
that  it  comprises  the  disposition  of  negative  self-feeling 
as  well  as  that  of  positive  self-feeling  ; it  is  the  presence 
of  this  disposition  within  the  sentiment  that  distin- 
guishes ssiffg^gect  from  pride.  We  have  seen  that 
negative  self-feeling  is  normally  evoked  by  the  presence 
of  any  person  who  makes  upon  us  an  impression  of 
power  ^rea^r  than  our  own,  and  that  its  impulse  is  to 
assume  an  attitude  of  submission  towards  that  person, 
an  attitude  which  becomes  in  the  child,  as  his  intellectual 
powers  develop,  an  attitude  of  receptivity,  of  imitative- 


194 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


ness  and  suggestibility.  The  juaia_(;^ondiiipn  of  the 
incorporation  of  this  disposition  in  the  self-regarding 
sentiment  i§_.the^e2^rcii^o£j.^^^^  by 

his  elders.  At  first  this  authority  necessarily  demon- 
strates its  superior  power  by  means  of  physical  force, 
later  by  means  of  rewards  and  punishments.  On  each 
occasion  that  the  exercise  of  personal  authority  over  the 
child  makes  him  aware  of  a superior  and  inflexible  power 
to  which  he  must  submit,  his  negative  self-feeling  is 
evoked  ; then  his  idea  of  self  in  relation  to  that  person 
becomes  habitually  accompanied  and  suffused  by  this 
emotion  in  however  slight  a degree,  and  he  habitually 
assumes  towards  that  person  the  attitude  of  submission. 
Thus  the  disposition  of  this  emotion  becomes  incor- 
porated in  the  self-regarding  sentiment. y^hereafter  all 
persons  fall  for  the  child  into  one  or  other  of  two 
classes ; in  the  one  class  are  those  who  impress  him  as 
beings  of  superior  power,  who  evoke  his  negative  self- 
feeling, and  towards  whom  he  is  submissive  and  recep- 
tive ; in  the  other  class  are  those  whose  presence  evokes 
his  positive  self-feeling  and  towards  whom  he  is  self- 
assertive  and  masterful,  just  because  they  fail  to 
impress  him  as  beings  superior  to  himself.  As  his 
powers  develop  and  his  knowledge  increases,  persons 
who  at  first  belonged  to  the  former  class  are  transferred 
to  the  latter ; he  learns,  or  thinks  he  learns,  the  limits 
of  their  powers ; he  no  longer  shrinks  from  a contest 
with  them,  and,  every  time  he  gains  the  advantage  in 
any  such  contest,  their  power  of  evoking  his  negative 
self-feeling  diminishes,  until  it  fails  completely.  When 
that  stage  is  reached  his  attitude  towards  them  is 
reversed,  it  becomes  self-assertive ; for  their  presence 
evokes  his  positive  self-feeling.  In  this  way  a child  of 
good  capacities,  in  whom  the  instinct  of  self-assertion  is 
strong,  works  his  way  up  the  social  ladder.  Each  of  the 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  195 


wider  social  circles  that  he  successively  enters — the  circle 
of  his  playmates,  of  his  school-fellows,  of  his  college,  of 
his  profession — impresses  him  at  first  with  a sense  of  a 
superior  power,  not  only  because  each  circle  comprises 
individuals  older  than  himself  and  of  greater  reputation, 
but  also  because  each  is  in  some  degree  an  organised 
whole  that  disposes  of  a collective  power  whose  nature 
and  limits  are  at  first  unknown  to  the  newly-admitted 
member.  But  within  each  such  circle  he  rapidly  finds 
his  level,  finds  out  those  to  whom  he  must  submit  and 
those  towards  whom  he  may  be  self-assertive.  Thus, 
when  he  enters  a great  school,  the  sixth-form  boys  may 
seem  to  him  god-like  beings  whose  lightest  word  is  law; 
and  even  the  boys  who  have  been  but  a little  while  in  the 
school  will  at  first  impress  him  and  evoke  his  negative 
self-feeling  by  reason  of  their  familiarity  with  many 
things  strange  to  him  and  in  virtue  of  their  assured 
share  in  the  collective  power  of  the  whole  society.  But, 
when  he  himself  has  reached  the  sixth  form,  or  perhaps 
is  captain  of  the  school,  how  completely  reversed  is  this 
attitude  of  submissive  receptivity ! When  he  enters 
college,  the  process  begins  again  ; the  fourth-year  men, 
with  their  caps  and  their  colours  and  academic  distinc- 
tions, are  now  his  gods,  and  even  the  dons  may  dominate 
his  imagination.  But  at  the  end  of  his  fourth  year,  after 
a successful  career  in  the  schools  and  the  playing  fields, 
how  changed  again  is  his  attitude  towards  his  college 
society ! The  dons  he  regards  with  kindly  tolerance, 
the  freshmen  with  hardly  disguised  disdain  ; and  very 
few  remain  capable  of  evoking  his  negative  self-feeling — 
perhaps  a “ blue,”  or  a ‘‘  rugger-international,”  or  a don 
of  world-wide  reputation  ; for  the  rest — he  has  compre- 
hended them,  grasped  their  limits,  labelled  them,  and 
dismissed  them  to  the  class  that  ministers  to  his  positive 
self-feeling.  And  so  he  goes  out  into  the  great  world 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


196 

to  repeat  the  process  and  to  carry  it  as  far  as  his  capa* 
cities  will  enable  him  to  do.* 

But  if  once  authority,  wielding  punishment  and 
reward,  has  awakened  negative  self-feeling  and  caused 
its  incorporation  in  the  self-regarding  sentiment,  that 
emotion  may  be  readily  evoked ; and  there  is  always 
one  power  * that  looms  up  vaguely  and  largely  behind 
all  individuals — the  power  of  society  as  a whole — which, 
by  reason  of  its  indefinable  vastness,  is  better  suited  than 
all  others  to  evoke  this  emotion  and  this  attitude.  The 
child  comes  gradually  to  understand  his  position  as  a 
member  of  a society  indefinitely  larger  and  more  power- 
ful than  any  circle  of  his  acquaintances,  a society  which 
with  a collective  voice  and  irresistible  power  distributes 
rewards  and  punishments,  praise  and  blame,  and  formu- 
lates its  approval  and  disapproval  in  universally  accepted 
maxims.  This  collective  voice  appeals  to  the  self- 
regarding  sentiment,  humbles  or  elates  us,  calls  out  our 
shame  or  self-satisfaction,  with  even  greater  effect  than 
the  personal  authorities  of  early  childhood,  and  gradu- 
ally supplants  them  more  and  more.  /And,  when  any 
individual  passes  upon  us  a well-founded  judgment  of 
moral  approval  or  disapproval,  he  wields  this  power;  and, 
though  he  may  be  personally  our  inferior,  his  expressions 
may  influence  us  profoundly,  because  we  realise  that 
his  moral  judgment  voices  the  collective  judgment  of 
all-powerful  society. 

• Professor  Baldwin  has  well  described  this  process,  although 
he  does  not  seem  to  have  recognised  the  two  instincts  which, 
according  to  the  view  here  taken,  are  the  all-important  factors. 
See  “ Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations  in  Mental  Development,” 
part  I.,  chap.  i. 

® I leave  out  of  account  here  religious  conceptions,  which  for 
many,  perhaps  most,  persons  play  this  all-important  part  in 
developing  the  self-regarding  sentiment ; not  because  they  are 
not  of  great  social  importance,  but  because  the  principles  involved 
are  essentially  similar  to  those  dealt  with  in  this  passage, 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  19; 


/The  exercise  of  inflexible  authority  over  the  child 
prevents,  then,  his  self-regarding  sentiment  taking  the 
form  of  pride  in  the  strict  sense,  pride  that  acknowledges 
no  superior,  that  knows  no  shame,  and  is  indifferent  to 
moral  approval  and  disapproval ; it  gives  the  sentiment 
the  form  of  a self-respect  that  is  capable  of  humility, 
of  the  receptive  imitative  attitude  of  negative  self- 
feeling; and,  by  so  doing,  it  renders  the  developing 
individual  capable  of  profiting  by  example  and  precept, 
by  advice  and  exhortation,  by  moral  approval  and 


n,  the  incorporation  of  negative  self-feeling 
in  the  self-regarding  sentiment  suffice  to  explain  the 
strength  of  our  regard  for  public  opinion,  for  the  praise 
and  blame  of  our  fellows?  Some  further  explanation 
is,  I think,  required.  /For  we  can  hardly  assume  that 
the  two  instincts  of  self-display  and  self-subjection,  which 
respectively  impel  us  to  seek  and  to  avoid  the  notice  of 
our  fellows,  impel  us  also  directly  to  seek  approval  and 
avoid  disapproval.  It  might  well  be  contended  that 
positive  self^feeling  seeks  merely  to  draw  the  attention 
of  others  to  the  self,  no  matter  what  be  the  nature  of  the 
regards  attracted  ; that  it  finds  its  satisfaction  simply  in 
the  fact  of  the  self  being  noticed  by  others.  There  is 
much  in  the  behaviour  of  human  beings  to  justify  this 
view — for  example,  the  large  number  of  men  who  seek, 
and  who  are  gratified  by,  mere  notoriety,  some  of 
whom  will  even  commit  criminal  acts  in  order  to  secure 
notoriety ; or  again,  the  large  number  of  people  whose 
dress  is  clearly  designed  to  attract  attention,  but  which, 
even  by  the  most  disordered  imagination,  can  hardly  be 
supposed  to  excite  admiration  or  approval ; or  again, 
the  curiously  great  satisfaction  most  of  us  find  in  seeing 
our  names  in  a newspaper  or  in  print  of  any  kind.  We 
have  to  ask,  Do  the  many  facts  of  this  order  imply 


198 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


perversion  of  instinct,  or  are  they  the  outcome  of  its 
primitive  and  natural  mode  of  operation?  It  is  not 
easy  to  decide ; but  it  is  at  any  rate  clear  that  the  satis- 
faction of  the  impulse  is  greater  when  the  regards  of 
others  are  admiring  regards,  or  such  as  to  express  in 
any  way  the  recognition  of  our  superiority  in  any 
respect. /'We  shall  probably  be  nearest  the  truth  if  we 
say  that  the  impulse  of  positive  self-feeling  primitively 
finds  its  satisfaction  when  the  attitude  of  others  towards 
us  is  that  of  negative  self- feeling,  the  normal  attitude  of 
men  in  the  presence  of  one  whom  they  recognise  as 
superior  to  themselves.  But  even  if  this  be  granted, 
something  more  is  needed  to  account  for  our  great 
regard  for  praise  and  approval.  Now,  the  effect  upon 
us  of  praise  and  of  approval  is  complex ; they  do  not, 
like  admiration,  simply  bring  satisfaction  to  our  positive 
self-feeling ; in  so  far  as  praise  is  accepted  as  praise,  it 
implies  our  recognition  of  the  superiority  of  him  who 
praises  and  an  attitude  of  submission  towards  him.  It 
is  for  this  reason  that  all  may  admire  a great  man  with- 
out impertinence,  and  that  he  may  derive  pleasure  from 
their  admiration  ; whereas  it  is  rightly  felt  to  be  an 
impertinence  for  any  one  to  praise  his  superior  in  any 
art  or  department  of  activity ; and  the  superior  is  apt 
to  resent  praise  coming  from  such  a quarter,  rather  than 
to  be  pieced  by  it  It  is  for  him  to  praise  if  he  so 
chooses. ''^That  is  to  say,  since  our  acceptance  of  praise 
involves  the  recognition  of  the  superiority  of  him  who 
praises,  praise  evokes  our  negative  self-feeling  ; but  since 
it  is  an  acknowledgment  by  our  superior  of  our  merit, 
it  also  elates  us ; in  other  words,  it  evokes  that  state  of 
bashfulness  in  which  the  impulses  and  emotions  of  the 
two  instincts  are  imperfectly  combined,  but  a bashful- 
ness that  is  highly  pleasant  because  both  impulses  are 
in  process  of  attaining  satisfaction.  And  moral  approval, 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  199 


embodying  as  it  does  the  verdict  of  society  upon  us, 
provokes  a like  complex  satisfaction. 

Blame  and  disapproval  also  are  apt  to  produce  a 
similarly  complex  effect. -^hey  check  the  impulse  of 
self-assertion  and  evoke  the  impulse  of  submission  ; and 
the  resulting  state  ranges,  according  as  one  or  other  of 
these  effects  predominates,  from  an  angry  resentment, 
in  which  negative  self-feeling  is  lacking,  through  shame 
and  bashfulness  of  many  shades,  to  a state  of  repentance 
in  which  the  principal  element  is  negative  self-feeling, 
and  which  may  derive  a certain  sweetness  from  the 
completeness  of  submission  to  the  power  that  rebukes 
us,  a sweetness  which  is  due  to  the  satisfaction  of  the 
ulse  of  submission. 


x‘he  organisation  of  these  two  dispositions  within  the 
self-regarding  sentiment  renders  us  capable  of  this  range 
of  moral  emotions ; but  still  something  more  is  needed 
to  explain  the  full  magnitude  of  the  effects  of  praise  and 
blame,  or  of  the  mere  anticipation  of  them.  We  may 
imagine,  and,  I think,  we  may  also  observe,  persons  in 
whom  the  sentiment  is  strong  and  whom  it  renders  very 
sensitive  to  the  opinions  of  others,  yet  whose  conduct  is 
not  effectually  controlled  by  the  sentiment ; for  these 
persons^  are  content  to  oscillate  between  the  luxury  of 
the  elation  induced  by„  ^l^e  and  the  lesser  luxury  of 
repentance  induced  by  blame. 

In  order  th^t  blan^^^  disapproval  shall  exert  ^ejr 
fylLiieterrent^  it  would  seem  that  some  other 

factor  or  factors  must  co-operate,  that  the  sentiment 
must  undergo  a process  of  moralisation.  We  may  find 
one  such  factor  in  the  influence  of  punishment  during 
the  early  days  of  childhood.  Punishment  and  the  f^ 
of  punishment  are  needed  by  most  of  us,  we  said,  to 
initiate  the  control  of  the  instinctive  impulses  and  the 
habit  of  reflection  before  action.  In  the  normal  course 


200 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


of  things  punishment  is  gradually  replaced  by  the 
threat  of  punishment  in  the  successively  milder  forms 
of  the  frown  and  angry  word,  the  severe  rebuke,  blame 
combined  perhaps  with  reproach,  and  moral  disapproval ; 
but  all  of  these  owe  something  of  their  effectiveness  to 
the  fact  that  they  retain  the  nature  of,  because  they 
continue  to  produce  the  effects  of,  the  early  punish- 
ments ; that  is  to  say,  they  evoke  some  degree  of  fear ; 
for  in  virtue  of  the  early  punishments  the  disposition  of 
fear  has  become  incorporated  in  the  self-regarding  sen- 
timent, and  fear,  as  we  know,  is  the  great  inhibitor  of 
action. /^ear,  then,  once  incorporated  in  the  sentiment, 
readily  enters  into  and  colours  our  emotional  attitude 
towards  authority  in  whatever  form  we  meet  it,  renders 
us  capable  of  awe  and  reverence  in  our  personal  rela- 
tions, and  is  one  of  the  principal  conditions  of  the 
effectiveness  of  moral  disapproval  as  a regulator  of 
conduct^ 

It  is  possible  also  that  praise  and  approval  owe  some 
ipart  of  their  power  over  us  to  their  early  association 
jwith  the  grosser  forms  of  reward,  which  they  gradually 
replace  as  the  moral  education  of  the  child  progresses. 

There  is  yet  another  factor  that  operates  in  very 
various  degrees  in  different  persons  to  develop  their 
regard  for  praise  and  blame,  their  sensitiveness  towards 
moral  approval  and  disapproval.  It  is  what  we  have 
called  active  sympathy,  that  tendency  to  seek  to  share 
our  emotions  and  feelings  with  others  which,  as  we 
found,  is  rooted  in  primitive  or  passive  sympathy  and 
in  the  gregarious  instinct.  The  person  in  whom  this 
tendency  is  strong  cannot  bear  to  suffer  his  various 

* It  may  seem  anomalous  that  fear  should  enter  into  the  self- 
regarding  sentiment;  but  we  have  to  remember  that  the  ob- 
ject of  this  sentiment  is  not  merely  the  self,  but  rather  the  self  in 
relation  to  other  persons. 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  201 


affective  experiences  in  isolation  ; his  joys  are  no  joys, 
his  pains  are  doubly  painful,  so  long  as  they  are  not 
shared  by  others ; his  anger  or  his  moral  indignation, 
his  vengeful  emotion,  his  pity,  his  elation,  his  admira- 
tion, if  they  are  confined  to  his  own  bosom,  cannot  long 
endure  without  giving  rise  to  a painful  desire  for  sym- 
pathy. / Active  sympathy  impels  him,  then,  not  only  to 
seek  to  bring  the  feelings  and  emotions  of  his  fellows 
into  harmony  with  his  own,  but  also,  since  that  is  often 
impossible,  to  bring  his  own  into  harmony  with  theirs. 
^Hence  he  finds  no  satisfaction  in  conduct  that  is  dis- 
pleasing to  those  about  him,  but  finds  it  in  conduct  that 
pleases  them,  even  though  it  be  such  as  would  otherwise 
be  distasteful,  repugnant,  or  painful  to  himself.  He 
finds  in  the  praise  of  his  fellows  evidence  that  his 
emotions  are  shared  by  them,  and  their  blame  or  dis- 
approval makes  him  experience  the  pain  of  isolation. 
To  many  children  this  sense  of  isolation,  of  being  cut 
off  from  the  habitual  fellowship  of  feeling  and  emotion, 
is,  no  doubt,  the  source  of  the  severest  pain  of  punish- 
ment ; and  moral  disapproval,  even  though  not  formally 
expressed,  soon  begins  to  give  them  this  painful  sense  of 
isolation ; while  approval  gratifies  the  impulse  of  active 
sympathy  and  makes  them  feel  at  one  with  their  fellows. 
And,  as  their  social  circle  widens  more  and  more,  so  the 
approval  and  disapproval  of  each  wider  circle  give  greater 
zest  to  their  elation  and  a deeper  pain  to  their  shame, 
and  are  therefore  more  eagerly  sought  after  or  shunned 
in  virtue  of  this  impulse  of  active  sympathy. 

^ The  two  principles  we  have  now  considered — on  the 
one  hand  the  influence  of  authority  or  power,  exercised 
primarily  in  bringing  rewards  and  punishments,  on  the 
other  hand  the  impulse  of  active  sympathy  towards 
harmony  of  feeling  and  emotion  with  our  fellows — these 
two  principles  may  sufficiently  account,  I think,  for  the 


202 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


moralisation  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment,  for  that 
regard  for  the  praise  and  blame  of  our  fellow-men  and 
for  moral  approval  and  disapproval  in  general,  which  is  so 
strong  in  most  of  us  and  which  plays  so  large  a part  in 
shaping  our  sentiments,  our  character,  and  our  conduct. 
This  regard  leads  on  some  men  to  the  higher  plane 
of  conduct,  conduct  regulated  by  an  ideal  that  may 
render  them  capable  of  acting  in  the  way  they  believe 
to  be  right,  regardless  of  the  approval  or  disapproval 
of  the  social  environment  in  which  their  lives  are 
passed. 

There  are,  of  course,  great  differences  between  men 
as  regards  the  delicacy  with  which  they  apprehend  the 
attitudes  of  others  towards  them.  /These  differences  are 
due  in  part  to  differences  of  intellectual  power,  but  in 
greater  part  to  differences  in  the  degree  of  development 
of  the  self-regarding  sentiment.  Any  man  in  whom  this 
sentiment  is  well  developed  will  be  constantly  observant 
of  the  signs  of  others*  feelings  in  regard  to  him,  and  so 
will  develop  his  powers  of  perceiving  and  interpreting 
the  signs  of  the  more  delicate  shades  of  feeling  that  do 
not  commonly  find  deliberate  expression.  On  the  other 
hand,  one  whose  perceptions  are  dull  and  whose  self- 
regarding  sentiment  is  not  strong  will  be  moved  only 
by  the  coarser  expressions  of  general  approval  and 
disapproval,  by  open  praise  and  blame.  Of  two  such 
men,  the  one  will  be  said  in  common  speech  to  have 
a sensitive  conscience,  and  the  other  to  have  a less 
delicate,  or  a relatively  defective,  conscience. 

^ Before  going  on  to  consider  the  higher  kind  of  con- 
duct, we  may  note  some  of  the  ways  in  which  conduct, 
while  remaining  upon  the  plane  of  regulation  by  the 
impulses  and  emotions  evoked  by  our  social  circle,  may 
be  complicated  by  altruistic  motives.  For,  just  as  upon 
the  purely  instinctive  plane  of  animal  life  the  parental 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  203 


instinct  may  impel  to  behaviour  from  which  we  cannot 
withhold  our  admiration,  so  it  may  do  upon  this  higher 
or  middle  plane  also,  working,  of  course,  in  more  subtle 
f ion. 


his  occurs  when  the  approval  and  the  disapproval  of 
others  move  us  not  merely  through  their  appeal  to  the 
self-regarding  sentiment,  but  also  because  we  see  that 
the  act  of  approval  is  pleasing,  and  the  act  of  disapproval 
painful,  to  him  who  approves  or  disapproves,  and  we 
desire  to  give  him  pleasure  and  to  avoid  giving  him 
pain.  This  kind  of  motive  implies  the  previous  growth 
of  a reciprocal  sentiment  of  affection  between  the  parties 
concerned.  Therefore  it  can  never  efficiently  supply  the 
place  of  the  coarser  egoistic  motives  arising  out  of  the 
self-regarding  sentiment.  Nevertheless,  within  the  family 
circle  or  other  intimate  community  it  constitutes  a very 
effective  supplement  to  the  egoistic  motives.  The  con- 
duct of  affectionate  children  is  in  many  cases  very  largely 
regulated  by  this  motive  from  an  early  age.  /When  they 
do  what  they  have  been  taught  to  believe  is  right,  it  is 
not  so  much  from  the  motive  of  securing  praise  or 
avoiding  blame,  as  from  that  of  giving  pleasure,  or 
avoiding  the  giving  of  pain,  to  those  they  love. 

This  is  a kind  of  conduct  that  has  its  own  peculiar 
charm,  and  it  tends  to  the  development  of  a very  delicate 
and  sympathetic  character,  though  a narrow  one ; it 
cannot  lead  on  to  the  stronger  forms  of  character  and 
to  conduct  based  on  broad  moral  principles  ; and  it 
renders  the  person  in  whom  this  kind  of  motive  pre- 
dominates peculiarly  dependent  upon  the  natures  of 
those  to  whom  he  is  attached.  Little  girls  act  from 
this  motive  far  more  commonly,  I think,  than  do  boys  ; 
the  tendency  to  its  predominance  seems  to  be  one  of 
the  distinguishing  features  of  their  sex,  as  we  might 
expect  if  it  is  true  that,  as  we  argued  in  Chapter  IIL,  all 


204 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


altruistic  conduct  has  its  root  and  origin  in  the  maternal 
instinct. 

The  motive  constituted  by  the  co-operation  of  this 
altruistic  impulse  with  the  egoistic  motive  of  securing 
praise  or  avoiding  blame,  is  apt  to  reach  a third  degree 
of  complication  by  the  addition  of  an  egoistic  motive 
that  is  secondary  to  the  altruistic.  When  a child  acts 
in  a way  that  secures  the  approval  of  his  mother  and 
pleases  her,  then,  apart  from  the  satisfaction  of  his 
tender  impulse  towards  her,  the  pleasure  that  he  derives 
from  her  approval  is  heightened  by  his  perception  of 
her  pleasure  in  his  conduct ; and  this  increase  of  his 
own  pleasure  may  have  one,  or  both,  of  two  sources — a 
simpler  and  a more  complex,  i^t  may  come  by  way  of 
that  primitive  sympathetic  reaction  in  virtue  of  which 
another’s  expression  of  a feeling  or  emotion  generates 
the  same  feeling  or  emotion  in  the  observer.*  There 
are  persons,  in  whom  this  primitive  sympathetic  ten- 
dency is  very  strong,  whose  kindly  conduct  to  those 
about  them  proceeds  largely  from  this  motive ; they 
cannot  bear  to  see  dull,  unhappy  faces  about  them,  for 
to  do  so  depresses  them  ; they  desire  to  see  those  about 
them  bright  and  joyous,  because  that  renders  themselves 
bright  and  joyous.  If  such  a person  is  in  a position  to 
influence  markedly  the  welfare  of  those  by  whom  he  is 
constantly  surrounded — if,  for  example,  he  is  the  head 
of  a family  or  the  master  of  many  servants  who  live  in 
close  contact  with  him — his  conduct  towards  them  will 
be  rendered  kindly  and  beneficent  up  to  a certain  point 
by  the  desire  to  secure  this  sympathetic  pleasure  and  to 
afraid  sympathetic  pain. 

H uhe  more  complex  source  of  the  pleasure  that  con- 
stitutes this  tertiary  motive  to  kindly  conduct  is  the 
sense  of  being  the  source  of  the  pleasure  the  expressions 
* Qf,  Chapter  IV, 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  205 


of  which  we  observe  in  those  round  about  us.  The 
impulse  of  positive  self-feeling  finds  satisfaction  in  the 
recognition  by  the  recipients  of  our  bounty  of  the  fact 
that  our  actions  have  benefited  them,  especially  if  those  re- 
cipients exhibit  gratitude  and  deference,  or  even  merely 
a lively  sense  of  favours  to  come.  / George  Meredith's 
“ Egoist  ” is  a fine  study  of  conduct  founded  predomi- 
nantly on  the  combination  of  the  desire  for  reflex  sympa- 
thetic pleasure  with  that  for  this  kind  of  satisfaction  of 
the  impulse  of  positive  self-feeling;  and  many  another 
rich  man's  beneficence  derives  in  the  main  from  this  last 
source.  Such  conduct  is,  of  course,  thoroughly  egoistic, 
though  it  implies  a disposition  in  which  the  primitive 
sympathetic  tendency  and  the  altruistic  impulse  are 
present  in  moderate  strength.  In  many  respects  such 
conduct  will  closely  resemble  altruistic  conduct ; but  it 
will  differ  in  one  very  important  respect,  namely,  that 
the  beneficence  arising  from  the  truly  altruistic  motive, 
the  impulse  of  the  tender  emotion,  knows  no  limits  and 
may  go  the  length  of  absolute  sacrifice,  even  of  life  and 
of  all  that  is  most  valued  in  life  ; Xvhereas  this  pseudo- 
altruistic  motive  will  never  impel  a man  to  sacrifice 
things  the  pain  of  the  loss  of  which  will  counterbalance 
the  pleasure  he  derives  from  contemplating  the  effects 
of  his  beneficent  actions. 

y^gain,  this  pseudo-altruistic  motive  can  impel  a man 
to  act  kindly  to  those  only  with  whom  he  is  in  personal 
contact — those  whose  pleasure  in,  and  whose  gratitude 
for,  his  gifts  and  kindly  attentions  he  can  observe.  To 
a man  predominantly  swayed  by  this  motive  the  happi- 
ness or  misery  of  all  who  are  outside  his  circle  and  are 
not  obtruded  upon  his  attention  will  be  a matter  of 
indifference ; and  even  within  his  circle  such  a man  will 
be  unjust,  and,  like  King  Lear,  will  shower  benefits 
upon  those  who  respond  most  readily  with  expressions 


206 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


of  pleasure  and  gratitude,  and  will  feel  resentment 
against  those  who  remain  unmoved.  And  his  conduct 
will  exert  a deleterious  influence  upon  those  about  him, 
will  encourage  flattery  and  toadying  in  some ; but  it 
will  provoke  the  scorn  of  men  of  sterner  fibre,  if  they 
are  able  to  understand  his  motives. 

Upon  this  middle  plane  of  conduct,  and  alongside  the 
pseudo-altruistic  conduct  just  now  considered,  must  be 
ranged  also  the  conduct  proceeding  from  certain  quasi- 
alj:riiisiLc  motives  wM^^  arise  from  the  extension  of  the 
self-regarding  sentiment  and  are  of  the  greatest  import- 
ance for  the  Hfe^f 

We  have  already  touched  upon  this  subject  in 
describing  the  full-blown  parental  sentiment.  The 
parental  sentiment,  we  said,  is  apt  to  be  not  only  a 
tender  sentiment  of  love  for  the  child,  but  to  be  com- 
plicated by  an  ext^n^ipii  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment 
to  him  and  to  all  that  pertains  to  him,  owing  to  the 
parents  intellectual  identification  of  the  child  with 
himself. 

But  the  child  is  by  no  means  the  only  object  to  which 
the  self-regarding  sentiment  may  be,  and  very  commonly 
is,  extended,  especially  in  men  in  whom  the  sympathetic 
tendency  and  the  gregarious  instinct  are  strong,  -^fter 
the  child  the  family  as  a whole,  both  in  the  past  and  in 
the  future  as  well  as  in  the  present,  is  the  object  to 
which  this  extension  is  most  readily  effected.  A man 
realises,  more  especially  perhaps  in  societies  less  com- 
plex than  our  own,  that  the  family  of  which  he  is  a part 
has  a capacity  for  collective  suffering  and  collective 
prosperity,  that  it  is  held  collectively  responsible  and  is 
the  collective  object  of  the  judgments,  emotions,  and 
sentiments  of  other  men  ; he  recognises  that  he,  being  a 
member  of  the  whole,  is  in  part  the  object  of  all  these 
regards.  In  so  far  as  he  does  this,  all  these  attitudes  of 


GROWTH  OF  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS  207 


other  men  appeal  to  his  self-regarding  sentiment,  evoke 
within  it  his  anger,  his  gratitude,  his  revenge,  his  posi- 
tive self-feeling,  his  shame.  Therefore  he  desires  that 
his  family  shall  prosper  and  shall  stand  well  in  the  eyes 
of  men ; and  this  desire  may  become  a motive  hardly 
less  strong  than  the  care  for  his  own  welfare  and 
position.  The  mere  community  of  name  of  all  the 
members  of  the  family  goes  a long  way  to  bring  about 
this  identification  of  the  self  with  the  family  and  the 
consequent  extension  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment, 
results  which  are  described  by  the  popular  phrase, 
“ Blood  is  thicker  than  water.” 

f And  this  extension  should  not,  and  usually  does  not, 
stop  short  at  the  family  ;/in  primitive  societies  the 
tribe  and  the  clan,  which  are  the  collective  objects 
of  the  regards  of  other  tribes  and  clans,  become 
also  the  objects  of  this  sentiment ; and  among  our- 
selves the  growing  child  is  led  on  in  the  same  way 
to  identify  himself  with,  and  to  extend  his  self-regard- 
ing sentiment  to,  his  school,  his  college,  his  town,  his 

• profession  as  a class  or  collective  unit,  and  finally  to 

Nhis  country  or  nation  as  a whole.  It  should  be  noted 
that,  in  each  case,  the  extension  of  the  sentiment 
depends  upon  the  existence  of  the  object,  the  school, 
the  profession,  the  country,  as  one  object  among  other 
similar  objects,  having  to  those  others  relations  similar 
to  the  relations  between  persons,  and  being  made  by 
those  other  collective  units  and  by  men  in  general  the 
object  of  judgments,  emotions,  sentiments,  and  actions, 
that  are  capable  of  evoking  our  resentment,  our  elation, 
our  gratitude,  and  all  the  specifically  personal  emotions. 
So  long  as  any  such  collective  unit  has  no  such  “ per- 
sonal ” relations,  the  extension  of  the  self-regarding 
sentiment  to  it  can  hardly  take  place;  for  example, 
it  is  not  extended  to  the  nation  or  people  that  is 


208 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


isolated  from  all  others  ; and  the  extended  sentiment 
tends  to  become  stronger  and  more  widely  distributed 
the  more  abundant  and  intense  are  the  interactions  of 
the  nation  with  others,  the  more  free  and  vigorous 
become  international  rivalry  and  criticism  ;Aha.t  is  to 
say,  our  patriotic  self-knowledge  and  sentiment,  just 
like  individual  self-knowledge  and  sentiment,  are 
developed  by  constant  interplay  with  other  similar 
collective  selves  ; they  grow  in  the  light  of  our  advanc- 
ing knowledge  of  those  other  selves  and  in  the  light 
of  the  judgments  passed  by  them  upon  our  collective 
self  and  upon  one  another. 

From  this  kind  of  extended  self-regarding  sentiment, 
then,  there  may  spring  motives  to  conduct  that  may 
involve  individual  self-sacrifice  ; and,  if  the  sentiment  is 
strong,  these  motives  may  be  powerful  enough  to  over- 
come the  more  narrowly  self-regarding  motives ; but  in 
the  main  they  work  in  harmony  with  these,  as  when 
the  patriot  soldier  in  giving  his  life  in  battle  brings 
glory  upon  himself  as  well  as  upon  his  country.* 

" These  quasi-altruistic  extensions  of  the  egoistic  senti- 
ment constitute  a very  important  part  of  the  moral 
equipment  of  the  individual ; for  they  lead  to  the 
subjection  of  immediate  personal  ends  in  the  service 
of  social  co-operation  undertaken  to  secure  the  collec- 
tive ends  that  individual  action  is  powerless  to  achieve. 
They  enrich  our  emotional  life  and  raise  our  emotions 
.^nd  conduct  to  an  over-individual  plane. 

' Like  the  fully  developed  parental  sentiment,  the  patriotism  of 
many  men  is  a fusion  of  this  quasi-altruistic  extension  of  the 
self-regarding  sentiment  with  the  truly  altruistic  sentiment  of 
love. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


THE  ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE  OF  SOCIAL 
CONDUCT 

>) : 

~~  ' t ^HE  regulation  of  conduct  ^ r^ard  for  the 
X approyaL  and  _disapprovaLQf_our  ^fello\v-nien  in 
the  way  discussed  in  the  preceding  chapter  has  certain 
limitations  and,  .drawbacks  in  spite  of  its  supreme 
importance  for  the  great  mass  of  mankind, 
ty  In  the  first  place  the  motives  involved  are  funda- 
mentally egoistic,  although,  as  we  saw,  they  may  in 
.certain  cases  be  leavened  with  the  altruistic  impulse, 
ly  Secondly,  the  approval  and  disapproval  of  our  social 
circle  cease  to  be  effective  sanctions  of  right  conduct, 
as  soon  as  we  can  be  quite  sure  that  our  lapse  from 
the  standard  demanded  of  us  will  never  be  known  to 
those  in  whose  minds  we  habitually  see  ourselves 
reflected  and  to  whose  approval  and  disapproval  we 
attach  importance ; or,  in  other  words,  the  man  whose 
right  conduct  rests  on  no  higher  basis  than  this  sanction 
will  not  conform  to  the  accepted  code,  in  spite  of  oppos- 
ing desires,  when  he  is  in  no  danger  of  being  “ found 
out.”  'in  order  to  remedy  this  defect  of  the  sanction  of 
public  opinion,  many  peoples  have  supplemented  it 
with  the  doctrine  of  an  all-seeing  eye,  of  a power 
that  can  observe  all  men’s  deeds,  however  carefully 
concealed,  and  will  distribute  rewards  and  punishments 


2 JO 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


either  in  this  life  or  another,  according  as  these  deeds 
conform  to,  or  transgress,  the  current  code  of  society. 
This  supplementary  sanction  has,  no  doubt,  proved  very 
effective  at  a certain  stage  of  the  moral  evolution  of 
societies,  ’^ut  it  must  be  recognised  that  the  motives  to 
which  this  sanction  appeals  are  lower  than  the  motives 
through  which  public  opinion  affects  conduct ; for  it 
commonly  relies  upon  rewards  and  punishments  of 
a lower  type  than  public  approval  and  disapproval. 
Further,  since  the  rewards  offered  and  the  punishments 
threatened  are  generally  extremely  remote  in  time  and 
of  uncertain  character,  and  since  some  uncertainty  as  to 
their  advent  is  apt  to  prevail,  they  have  to  be  described  as 
of  very  great  magnitude  if  they  are  to  be  effective  sanc- 
tions of  conduct ; And  the  promise  of  disproportionately 
large  rewards  or  punishments  is  in  itself  demoralising. 
iii)A  third  limitation  of  public  opinion  as  the  principal 
sanction  of  right  conduct  is  that  the  conduct  based  upon 
it  is  entirely  ^depend ent  on  the  nature  of  _the  jmpral 
traditjpn  and  custom  of  the  society  in  which  the  indi- 
vidual  gpDws  up.  Every  society  has  its  own  code,  and 
regards  as  absurd  or  even  wicked  those  features  of  other 
codes  in  which  they  differ  from  its  own.  Illustrations  of 
this  fact  abound  in  modern  works  on  morals.  Consider 
the  case  of  the  Fijian  who  regards  it  as  his  duty  to  slay 
his  parents,  when  they  attain  a certain  age,  and  gives 
them  a tender  and  dutiful  embrace  before  despatching 
them  to  the  grave ; or  of  certain  tribes  of  Borneo, 
among  whom  the  taking  of  a head  of  man,  woman,  or 
child,  even  by  methods  involving  perfidious  treachery, 
is  the  surest  road  to  popular  esteem  ^ ; or,  again,  the  case 

• I would  ask  the  reader  to  refrain  from  taking  this  remark  as 
applicable  to  all  the  peoples  of  Borneo.  Most  of  these  much 
maligned  savages  are  quite  incapable  of  such  conduct,  w^hich  is 
peculiar  to  the  Sea  Dayaks  or  I bans. 


ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE  211 


l«) 


of  men  of  the  same  region  who  feel  shame  if  seen  by  a 
stranger  without  the  narrow  bands  that  they  commonly 
wear  just  below  the  knee,  although  no  other  garment 
is  considered  absolutely  indispensable. 
i^'^^The  sanction  of  public  opinion,  then,  provides  no 
guarantee  against  gross  defects  and  absurdities  of 
conduct ; and — what  is  of  more  importance — it  contains 
within  itself  no  principle  of  progress^  but  tends  rather  to 
produce  rigid  customs  whose  only  changes  Me„aptLto 
f d^^  elements  once  valuable. 

We  have  now  to  consider  the  ways  in  which  some  men 
advance  to  a plane  of  conduct  higher  than  that  regulated 
by  the  approval  and  disapproval  of  their  social  circle. 

As  the  young  child’s  sphere  of  social  relations  widens, 
he  finds  that  certain  of  the  rules  of  the  family  circle  are 
everywhere  upheld,  that  the  breaking  of  them  brings 
universal  disapproval.  In  primitive  societies,  in  which 
custom  is  usually  extremely  rigid  and  well  defined  and 
is  unquestioned  by  any  member  of  the  society,  this  is 
true  of  all  the  current  rules  of  conduct ; the  breach 
of  any  one  brings  universal  disapproval.  If  the  develop- 
ment of  the  self-regarding  sentiment  has  been  initiated 
in  normal  fashion  by  the  exercise  of  authority  over  the 
child  within  the  family  circle,  no  boy  or  man  can  bear 
up  against  universal  disapproval,  unless  he  has  found 
some  higher  source  of  moral  guidance ; hence  we  find 
that  in  many  primitive  or  savage  societies  the  rules  of 
conduct,  positive  and  negative,  prescribed  by  custom 
are  scrupulously  observed  by  all  members. 

In  modern  civilised  societies,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
child  is  generally  subjected  in  his  early  years  to  much 
more  numerous  and  more  strictly  enforced  rules  than 
the  savage  child  ever  knows.  /But,  when  he  emerges 
from  his  home  into  a wider  social  sphere,  he  finds  that 
some  only  of  these  rules,  such  as  those  against  theft  and 


212 


bOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


murder,  are  maintained  by  the  general  voice  of  society, 
and  are  embodied  in  public  law ; these  accordingly  he 
continues  to  accept  and  observe.  Others  of  his  nursery 
rules,  he  finds,  are  not  at  all  enforced  by  the  opinion  and 
feeling  of  the  social  circles  in  which  he  moves ; while  as 
regards  others,  again,  he  discovers  that  they  are  main- 
tained by  some  persons  and  ignored  by  others — some 
of  them  being  accepted  in  one  social  circle,  others  in 
another.  /And  unless  and  until  the  average  boy  or  man 
has  risen  to  the  higher  plane  of  conduct,  he  will  almost 
inevitably  accept  the  peculiarities  of  the  code  of  conduct 
of  any  circle,  so  long  as  he  acts  as  a member  of  that  circle. 

The  boy's  discovery  of  the  diversities  of  the  codes  of 
different  members  and  circles  of  his  society  necessarily 
weakens  the  influence  upon  him  of  the  rules  in  regard 
to  which  such  diversities  obtain ; he  is  led  by  them  to 
question  the  sanction  of  public  opinion  as  applied  to 
these  departments  of  conduct ; and,  if  he  conforms 
to  the  diverse  codes  of  his  various  social  circles,  his 
habits  of  moral  conduct  will  not  become  so  firm  as 
they  would  if  he  were  acquainted  with  one  code  only. 
These  diversities  of  opinion  in  our  complex  civilised 
societies  weaken,  then,  the  force  with  which  public 
opinion  bears  upon  each  individual's  conduct,  and  they 
render  the  conduct  of  the  mass  of  civilised  men  very 
much  less  consistent  with  the  standards  they  profess 
than  is  that  of  most  savages  and  barbarians.  This, 
however,  does  not  imply  any  innate  moral  inferiority 
of  the  civilised  man ; and,  though  it  results  in  many 
grave  social  evils  of  kinds  that  are  hardly  known  in 
well-organised  savage  societies,  it  brings  one  great  ad- 
vantage, which  more  than  compensates  civilised  societies 
for  the  uncertainty  of  conduct  and  for  the  appearance 
of  inferior  morality  on  the  part  of  the  mass  of  their 
} members ; namely,  it  gives  scope  and  occasion  for  the 


ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE  213 


development  of  higher  types  of  conduct  and  character 
than  can  be  found  in  primitive  communities,  and  hence 
it  renders  possible  the  progress  of  the  moral  tradition 
through  the  influence  of  these  higher  types. 

For  in  primitive  societies  the  precision  of  the  cus- 
tomary code  and  the  exact  coincidence  of  public 
opinion  with  the  code,  allow  of  no  occasion  for 
deliberation  upon  conduct,  no  scope  for  individual 
moral  judgment  and  choice;  they  provide  no  sphere 
of  action  for,  and  no  stimulus  to  the  development  of, 
strong  character,  such  as  that  of  the  man  who  can  not 
only  resist  the  promptings  of  his  strongest  instinctive 
impulses,  but  is  capable  also  of  standing  up  against 
public  opinion  and  of  doing  what  he  judges  to  be  right 
in  defiance  of  it. 

Let  the  reader  try  to  imagine  himself  a member  of 
a society  whose  code  prescribes  that  he  shall  fall  flat  on 
his  face  whenever  he  meets  his  mother-in-law,  or  that 
he  shall  never  mention  certain  of  his  relatives  by  name  ; 
and  let  him  imagine  that  these  and  almost  all  other 
details  of  conduct  are  prescribed  by  rules  the  breach 
of  which  is  visited  with  the  reprobation  of  the  whole 
community  and  often  with  the  severest  punishments ; 
he  will  then  understand  how  little  scope  is  afforded  by 
such  a rigid  code  for  the  development  of  character 
and  will. 

The  exercise  of  moral  judgment  is  essential  to  the 
progress  of  individuals  to  the  higher  plane  of  conduct, 
and  at  this  point  we  must  briefly  consider  the  conditions 
of  such  judgment  We  may  take  Dr.  Fowler's  state- 
ment of  the  relation  of  moral  judgment  to  emotion  as 
representing  the  traditional  and  prevalent  doctrine. 
He  wrote  : “ When  an  action  has  once  been  pronounced 
to  be  right  or  wrong,  morally  good  or  evil,  or  has  been 
referred  to  some  well-known  class  of  actions  whose 


214 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


ethical  character  is  already  determined,  the  emotion 
of  approval  or  disapproval  is  excited  and  follows  as 
a matter  of  course”;  and  again:  “No  sooner  is  the 
intellectual  process  completed,  and  the  action  duly 
labelled  as  a lie,  or  a theft,  or  a fraud,  or  an  act  of 
cruelty  or  ingratitude,  or  the  like,  than  the  appropriate 
ethical  emotion  is  at  once  excited.”^  These  and  similar 
passages  expound  the  traditional  doctrine  that  the 
intellectual  process  of  classing,  of  rightly  naming, 
the  conduct  on  which  we  pass  moral  judgment  is 
the  primary  and  essential  step  in  exerting  moral 
judgment,  and  that  any  emotion  involved  in  Ihe  pro- 
cess is  consequent  on  this  intellectual  process.  ^Qt^^s, 
on  the  other  hand,  totally  rej^t  this  doctrine  and 
reverse  the  order  of  the  process.  Professor  Wester- 
marck,  for  example,  maintains  that  moral  judgments  are 
expressions  of  moral  emotions ; he  writes : “ That  the 
moral  concepts  are  ultimately  based  on  emotions  either 
of  indignation  or  approval,  is  a fact  which  a certain 
school  of  thinkers  have  in  vain  attempted  to  deny.”  2 
Here  we  seem  to  have  two  flatly  opposed  doctrines 
of  moral  judgment.  According  to  the  one,  judgment 
in  every  case  produces  the  emotion ; according  to  the 
other,  the  emotion  always  determines  the  judgment. 
We  must  recognise  that  both  are  partially  true. -''^e 
must  admit  with  Westermarck  that  the  doctrine  he 
opposes  contains  the  intellectualist  fallacy  (against 
which  there  has  recently  been  so  widespread  a 
reaction),  and  that  moral  judgments  are  ultimately 
based  on  the  emotions ; but  then  we  must  lay  stress 
on  the  word  “ ultimately.” -xlFor  the  emotions  on  which 
a man’s  moral  judgments  are  based  may  be  not  his 
own  emotions  at  the  time  of  passing  judgment,  and 

t « Progressive  Morality." 

’ " The  Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral  Ideas/'  p.  4. 


ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE  215 


not  even  his  own  earlier  emotions,  but  the  emotions, 
especially  that  disinterested  emotion  we  call  moral 
indignation,  of  those  who  in  bygone  ages  have  played 
their  parts  in  the  shaping  of  the  moral  tradition. 

No  man,  perhaps,  ever  has  learnt  to  make  moral 
judgments  without  previously  experiencing  some 
emotions  of  the  kind  from  which  the  moral  tradition 
ultimately  sprang ; but  it  is  at  least  theoretically 
possible  to  do  so.  For  every  moral  tradition  embodies 
a great  number  of  ready-made  judgments  formulated 
in  words ; and  every  well-organised  society  imposes 
its  moral  tradition  upon  each  of  its  members  with 
tremendous  force.  The  child  learns  to  accept  many 
of  these  current  maxims  simply  through  suggestion, 
chiefly  of  the  kind  we  have  distinguished  as  prestige- 
suggestion  ; his  parents  and  teachers  repeatedly  assert 
various  moral  propositions — it  is  wrong  to  tell  a lie,  to 
steal,  to  deceive,  to  be  cruel ; it  is  right  to  be  honest, 
kind,  or  generous ; and  the  voice  of  society,  with  its 
irresistible  prestige,  re-enforces  these  assertions.  The 
child  accepts  these  and  many  other  similar  proposi- 
tions, and  will  apply  them  to  the  conduct  of  himself 
and  others,  before  he  can  understand  the  ground  of 
them,  and  before  actions  of  the  kind  to  which  they 
are  applicable  have  evoked  in  him  any  emotion  that 
could  determine  the  appropriate  moral  judgment.  For 
example,  a child  will  accept  on  suggestion,  and  will 
appropriately  apply,  the  proposition  that  it  is  wrong  to 
put  your  elbows  on  the  table ; and,  if  he  has  acquired 
in  some  degree  the  sentiment  for  law  or  rule,  he  may 
pass  the  judgment,  You  are  very  naughty  to  put  your 
elbows  on  the  table,**  with  some  indignation,  just  as  he 
might  reprove  another  for  stealing  or  cruelty.  It  would 
be  absurd  to  maintain  that  his  condemnation  of  the 
elbows  is  an  original  moral  judgment  arising  out  of 


2I6 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


moral  indignation.  /We  must,  in  short,  distinguish 
between  original  moral  judgment  and  imitative  moral 
judgments.  As  regards  the  latter,  the  traditional 
doctrine  is  true — the  act  of  classing  precedes  and 
determines  the  moral  emotion ; as  regards  original 
moral  judgments.  Wester  march  is  in  the  right — they 
proceed  directly  from  emotions. 

/ The  acceptance  by  the  normal  child  of  the  major 
part  of  the  current  maxims  is  inevitable,  if  they  are 
authoritatively  asserted  to  him  ;i^and  his  regard  for 
tthem  and  conformity  to  them  are  secured  by  that  pro- 
cess of  development  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment  by 
the  agency  of  rewards  and  punishments,  praise  and 
blame,  which  we  studied  in  the  foregoing  chapter.  As 
I regards  these  imitative  judgments,  we  may  go  even 
farther  than  Dr.  Fowler  and  the  intellectualists,  and 
may  say  that  they  may  be  made,  not  only  without 
I antecedent  emotion,  but  also  without  any  consequent 
i moral  emotion,  that  they  may  be  purely  intellectual, 
though  this  is  seldom  the  case.  That  is  to  say,  we 
accept  certain  maxims  of  conduct,  either  purely  by 
suggestion  or  in  part  also  in  virtue  of  original  judg- 
ments springing  from  our  emotions  and  sentiments ; 
thereafter  the  accepted  maxims  or  principles  may  give 
rise  to  moral  judgment  by  way  of  a purely  intellectual 
process,*  the  recognition  of  the  agreement  or  dis- 
agreement of  conduct  with  those  principles,  a process 
that  may  be  expressed  in  syllogistic  form — all  lies  are 
wrong ; that  is  a lie,  therefore  that  is  wrong.  And 
action  also  may  follow  in  virtue  of  another  previously 
accepted  principle ; I ought  to  punish  your  wrong 
conduct,  therefore  I punish  you.  course,  such 

• That  is,  a process  as  purely  intellectual  as  any  mental  process 
can  be ; the  motive  power  of  the  process  is  not  the  impulse  of 
some  emotion  directly  evoked  by  the  action  judged. 


ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE  217 


purely  intellectual  judgments,  unsupported  by  emotion 
directly  evoked  by  the  conduct  judged  of,  will  not  lead 
to  efforts,  on  behalf  of  the  right  and  against  the  wrong, 
so  energetic  as  the  efforts  that  may  follow  upon 
emotional  judgments. 

It  is  through  original  moral  judgments  of  approval 
and  disapproval  that  a man  rises  to  the  higher  plane  of 
conduct ; therefore  it  is  in  them  that  we  are  chiefly 
interested  in  the  present  connection. 

Judgments  of  approval  and  disapproval  are  of  two 
great  classes,  the  aesthetic  and  the  moral,  which  are 
differentiated  from  a common  stock,  but  never  com- 
pletely differentiated  by  most  men.  We  continue  to 
use  the  same  verbal  expressions  for  judgments  of  both 
kinds ; ought,  should,  must,  good,  bad,  wrong,  and 
right  are  terms  we  use  equally  in  moral  and  in  aesthetic 
judgment.  Such  judgments  are  commonly  said  to 
spring  from  emotions  of  approval  and  disapproval,  and, 
though  there  is  much  looseness  and  vagueness  in  current 
accounts  of  these  alleged  emotions,  they  are  described, 
or  referred  to,  by  many  authors  as  the  specifically  moral 
emotions.  This  is  only  one  more  illustration  of  the 
chaotic  condition  in  which  the  psychology  of  the  emo- 
tions still  remains.  < 

We  have  already  seen  that  judgments  of  approval 
and  disapproval  may  be  purely  intellectual  processes, 
determined  by  previously  accepted  principles,  and  that 
such  judgments  may  or  may  not  be  followed  by  appro- 
priate emotions  having  as  their  objects  the  actions  on 
which  judgment  has  been  passed.  The  question  remains, 
Are  there  any  specific  emotions  from  which  original 
moral  judgments  spring  and  which  might  be  described 
as  emotions  of  approval  and  disapproval  ? The  answer,  I 
think,  must  be — Certainly  not/there  is  no  specific  emo- 
tion of  approval  or  of  disapproval.  For  it  is  impossible 


2i8 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


to  point  to  any  such  emotions  distinct  from  those  we 
have  already  recognised,  and  either  form  of  judgment 
may  spring  from  any  one  of  several  of  those  primary 
emotions  or  of  the  complex  emotions,  -judgment  of 
approval  may  be  prompted  by  admiration,  gratitude, 
positive  self-feeling,  or  by  any  one  of  the  emotions 
when  induced  by  way  of  the  primitive  sympathetic 
reaction  ; judgment  of  disapproval  springs  most  fre- 
quently from  anger,  either  in  its  primary  uncomplicated 
form,  ^ or  as  an  element  in  one  of  its  secondary  combina- 
tions, such  as  shame,  reproach,  scorn,  but  also  from  fear 
and  disgust.  And  they  may,  perhaps,  be  prompted  by 
feelings  of  pleasure  and  pain  respectively  without  emo- 
tion, though  judgments  having  this  source  are  properly 
aesthetic  rather  than  moral  judgments.  In  the  young 
child  these  original  moral  judgments  spring  from  the 
unorganised  emotions ; but  in  the  adult  they  are  more 
commonly  prompted  by  emotions  excited  within  some 
sentiment  by  actions  affecting  the  object  of  the  senti- 
ment, 

1 1 is  notorious  that  the  sentiments  determine  our 
moral  judgments.  X man's  concrete  sentiments  are  apt 
Jta  lead  him  to  judgments  that  are  valid  only  for  him- 
self, that  have  little  objective  or  supra-individual  validity  ; 
or,  as  is  commonly  said,  they  pervert  his  judgment 
Thus  it  is  notoriously  difficult  to  pass  moral  judgments 
of  general  or  objective  validity  upon  the  acts  of  those 
we  love  or  hate.  In  the  one  case  the  emotions  that 
determine  approval  are  apt  to  play  too  great  a part — 
for  the  principal  emotions  of  the  sentiment  of  love  are 
of  this  order  ; in  the  other  case  those  which  determine 

‘ For  example,  some  young  children  pass  the  original  moral 
judgment  ‘'You  are  naughty’'  upon  any  person  who  interferes 
with  their  play  or  work,  who  obstructs  in  any  way  the  operation 
of  any  impulse  and  so  evokes  their  anger. 


ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE  219 

disapproval.  \he  abstract  seatioieiits.  on  the  other 
hand,  such  sentiments  as  the  love  of  justice,  truth, 
courage,  self-sacrifice,  hatred  of  selfishness,  of  deception, 
of  slothfulness — these  alop^  enable  us  to  pass  moral 
judgments  of  general  validity.  These  sentiments  for 
abstract  objects,  the  various  qualities  of  conduct  and  of 
character,  are  the  specifically  moral  sentiments.  It  is, 
then,  through  the  development  of  such  abstract  senti- 
ments that  the  individual's  moral  development  and  the  re- 
finement of  his  moral  judgment,  both  of  his  own  acts  and 
those  of  other^  is  effected,  and  that  his  moral  principles 
are  formed.  /And  it  is  as  regards  this  development  of 
the  abstract  moral  sentiments  that  the  individual  is 
most  open  to  the  influence  xdJtih  saciaL  eiivkonmeiiL 
^o  man  could  acquire  by  means  of  his  own  unaided 
reflections  and  unguided  emotions  any  considerable 
array  of  moral  sentiments  ; still  less  could  he  acquire  in 
that  way  any  consistent  and  lofty  system  of  them.^^-'In 
the  ^rst  place,  the  intellectual  process  of  discriminating 
and  naming  the  abstract  qualities  of  character  and  con- 
duct is  quite  beyond  the  unaided  power  of  the  indi- 
vidual ; in  this  process  he  finds  indispensable  aid  in  the 
language  that  he  absorbs  from  his  fellows.-^^But  he  is 
helped  not  by  language  only  ; every  civilised  society 
has  a more  or  less  highly  developed  moral  tradition, 
consisting  of  a system  of  traditional  abstract  sentiments. 
This  moral  tradition  has  been  slowly  formed  and  im- 
proved by  the  influence  of  the  great  and  good  men,  the 
moral  leaders  of  the  race,  through  many  generations ; it 
has  been  handed  on  from  generation  to  generation 
in  a living  form  in  the  sentiments  of  the  e'/zte,  the 
superior  individuals  of  each  generation,  and  has  been 
embodied  in  literature,  and,  in  partial  fashion,  in  a 
variety  of  institutions,  such  as  the  Church.^^And  every 
great  and  organised  department  of  human  activity,  each 


220 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


profession  and  calling  of  a civilised  society,  has  its  owrf 
specialised  form  of  the  moral  tradition,  which  in  some 
respects  may  sink  below,  in  other  respects  may  risd 
above,  the  moral  level  of  the  unspecialised  or  general 
tradition. 

/The  moral  tradition  of  any  society  lives,  in  its  fullest 
completest  form,  only  in  the  strong  moral  sentiments  of 
a comparatively  few  individuals,  those  who  are  expres- 
sively called  “ the  salt  of  the  earth.”  The  great  majority 
of  men  participate  in  it  only  in  a very  partial  manner 
and  in  very  diverse  degrees,  as  regards  both  the  strength 
of  their  moral  sentiments  and  the  nature  and  number  of 
such  sentiments  as  they  in  any  degree  acquire.  And  it 
is  only  by  the  absorption  of  the  moral  tradition  that  any 
man  can  acquire  a respectable  array  of  moral  sentiments ; 
even  the  great  moral  reformer  begins  by  absorbing  the 
moral  tradition,  before  he  can  go  on  to  add  to  it,  or  to 
reform  it,  in  some  respect.  This  is  the  truth  expressed 
by  T.  H.  Green  when  he  wrote  : “ No  individual  can  make 
a conscience  for  himself.  He  always  needs  a society  to 
t ke  it  for  him.”  * 


-f  an  individual  is  to  acquire  abstract  moral  sentiments, 
he  must  not  grow  up  in  a society  that  is  completely 
bound  by  the  laws  of  rigid  and  uniform  custom.  Rigid 
custom  is  the  cement  of  society  in  the  ages  preceding 
the  formation  of  a moral  tradition,  and/4he  breaking  of 
the  rigid  bonds  of  custom,  bonds  which  were  probably 
essential  for  the  preservation  of  primitive  societies,  was 
the  prime  condition  of  the  gro\^  of  the  moral  tradi- 
tion of  the  progressive  nations. //in  the  same  way,  it  is 
a prime  condition  of  the  moral  progress  of  individuals  ; 
the  individual  also  must  not  be  bound  in  absolute  obedi- 
ence to  any  system  of  rules  of  conduct  prescribed  by 
custom  or  in  any  other  manner.  For  in  either  case  he 


' “ Prolegomena  to  Ethics,”  p.  351, 


ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE  221 


has  no  occasion  for  reflection  upon  conduct,  no  scope  for 
the  free  exercise  of  moral  judgment  and  choice,  no 
opportunity  of  acquiring  by  absorption  the  traditional 
system  of  moral  sentiments. 

Suppose  that,  as  is  the  case  in  many  savage  societies, 
the  conduct  of  each  of  us  in  every  social  relation  were 
prescribed  by  a rigid  custom  ; suppose,  as  was  suggested 
above,  that  you  must  never  speak  to,  or  look  at,  your 
mother-in-law ; that,  if  you  meet  her  out  of  doors,  you 
must  fall  flat  on  your  face  until  she  has  passed  by ; and 
that  infringement  of  this  customary  law  is  invariably 
punished  by  death  or  other  severe  penalty.  Suppose 
also  that  all  the  rest  of  your  social  behaviour  were 
defined  with  similar  precision  and  rigidity.  Or  imagine 
the  case  of  a member  of  one  of  the  mediaeval  religious 
communities  whose  only  duty,  to  which  he  was  trained 
from  earliest  youth,  was  unquestioning  obedience  to  his 
superior.  It  is  easy  to  understand  that  under  such  con- 
ditions we  should  hardly  be  led  to  reflect  on  conduct, 
to  acquire  the  moral  sentiments,  or  to  make  moral 
judgments  of  any  kind  ; for  our  own  conduct,  we  should 
merely  have  to  ascertain  what  behaviour  custom  pre- 
scribes for  each  situation  and  to  observe  its  prescription  ; 
and,  as  regards  the  conduct  of  other  men  also,  there  would 
be  no  scope  for  moral  judgment  but  only  for  the  ascer- 
tainment of  fact.  Did  he,  or  did  he  not,  neglect  this 
observance  ? If  he  did,  he  must  be  punished  ; if  not,  he 
is  to  go  free.  That  is  to  say,  under  such  a system  there 
is  scope  only  for  the  merely  legal  attitude,  but  none  for 
that  of  moral  judgment. 

/ But  the  child  growing  up  in  the  midst  of  a complex 
/ and  cultured  society,  coming  in  contact  with  various 
j social  circles  in  which  diversities  of  code  and  opinion 
! obtain,  and  reading  history  and  romance,  becomes 
I acquainted  with  a great  variety  of  opinions,  of  moral 


222 


SOCIAL  psychology 


codes,  and  of  character  and  modes  of  conduct ; while 
language  leads  him  to  the  formation  of  a certain  number 
of  abstract  conceptions  of  qualities  of  conduct  and 
character,  however  vague  and  fluctuating.  If,  under 
these  conditions,  the  child  were  left  entirely  without 
moral  guidance,  he  would  acquire  some  abstract  moral 
sentiments,  whose  nature  would  be  determined  by  the 
strongest  emotional  dispositions  of  his  native  disposition 
and  by  the  chance  circumstances  of  his  life ; he  would 
acquire  some  sentiment  of  liking  for  all  those  qualities 
and  types  of  conduct  and  character  which  brought  him 
the  most  frequent  and  intense  satisfactions,  both  ideal 
and  actual,  and  some  sentiment  of  hate  or  dislike  for 
those  which  most  often  thwarted  his  efforts  and  brought 
him  pain.  /That  is  to  say,  he  would  build  up  certain 
abstract  sentiments  by  means  of  a series  of  original 
moral  judgments  coming  from  his  emotions  and  his 
concrete  sentiments. 

But  when  the  child  is  thus  brought  into  contact  with 
a variety  of  characters,  codes,  and  opinions,  he  normally 
comes  also  under  strong  influences  that  mould  his  grow- 
ing abstract  sentiments.  /The  moral  sentiments  that  are 
most  fully  embodied  in  the  moral  tradition  of  his  time 
and  country  are  impressed  upon  him  on  all  hands  by 
precept  and  example — e.g,^  love  of  common  honesty  and 
of  courage,  dislike  of  meanness  and  of  cruelty;  while 
of  other  moral  sentiments  belonging  to  the  more  refined 
part  of  the  moral  tradition,  he  finds  some  entertained  by 
some  persons,  others  by  other  persons.  Among  all 
these  persons  some  will  impress  their  abstract  sentiments 
upon  him  more  than  others ; and,  in  the  main,  those 
that  so  impress  him  will  be  those  whose  power,  or 
achievements,  or  position,  evoke  his  admiration.//Of  all 
the  affective  attitudes  of  one  man  towards  another, 
admiration  is  that  which  renders  him  most  susceptible 


ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE  223 


to  and  it  is  easy  to  see  why  this 

should  be  so,  if  our  analysis  of  admiration  was  correct. 
We  said*  that  admiration  is  compounded  of  wonder 
and  n^ative  self- feeling.  ^The  impulse  of  wonder,  then, 
keeps  his  attention  directed  upon  the  admired  person  ; 
the  impulse  of  negative  self-feeling  throws  him  into  the 
submissive,  receptive,  suggestible  attitude  towards  the 
object  of  his  admiration.  /Hence  the  child  accepts  by 
suggestion  the  moral  propositions  of  the  persons  he 
admires,  he  imitates  their  actions  and  sympathetically 
shares  their  moral  emotions ; and  so  his  developing 
abstract  sentiments  are  moulded  in  accordance  with 
those  of  the  admired  persons,  /if  these  persons  de- 
liberately aim  at  moulding  his  sentiments,  the  extent 
of  their  influence  in  this  direction  is  only  limited  by  his 
intellectual  capacity  for  forming  abstract  conceptions  of 
the  various  qualities  of  conduct  and  character. 

/ The  child,  then,  builds  up  his  abstract  sentiments  by 
means  of  a series  of  emotional  judgments,  judgments  of 
approval  and  disapproval,  which  are  original  in  the 
sense  that  they  spring  from  his  emotions  and  concrete 
sentiments ; but  they  are  not  independently  formed 
judgments,  but  rather  emotional  judgments  made 
under  the  very  powerful  directing  influence  of  personal 
suggestion  and  sympathy./^n  modern  societies  this 
influence  is  exerted,  not  only  through  personal  contact, 
but  on  a very  great  scale  by  literature  ; for,  in  so  far  as 
we  learn  to  grasp  in  some  degree  the  personality  of  an 
author  and  to  admire  him,  the  expressions  of  his 
abstract  sentiments  exert  this  personal  influence  upon 
us,  more  especially,  of  course,  upon  the  young  mind 
whose  sentiments  are  not  fully  formed  and  crystallised. 
This,  of  course,  is  the  principal  reason  that  literature 
read  as  such,  as  the  expressions  of  great  personalities 
* Seep.  128. 


224 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


that  evoke  our  admiration,  is  so  superior,  as  food  for  the 
growing  mind,  to  the  productions  of  the  daily  and 
weekly  press ; for,  no  matter  how  well  written  these 
may  be,  nor  how  admirable  the  moral  sentiments 
expressed  or  implied,  they  fail  to  exert  the  great  influ- 
ence of  an  admired  personality.  Even  if  the  author  of 
acknowledged  eminence  is  not  intrinsically  superior  to 
one  less  generally  recognised,  he  will  exert  a greater 
moulding  influence  upon  the  abstract  sentiments  of  his 
readers,  simply  because  their  knowledge  that  so  many 
others  admire,  and  have  admired,  this  author,  increases 
by  mass-suggestion  and  sympathy  their  admiration  for 
him  and  so  increases  also  their  receptivity  towards  him 
and  all  his  opinions  and  expressions. 

<J^In  all  this  absorption  of  the  more  refined  parts  of  the 
moral  tradition,  the  native  disposition  of  the  individual 
will  make  itself  felt  more  or  less.ft-If  the  training  of 
the  moral  sentiments  is  most  carefully  and  skilfully 
supervised  from  the  first  years  of  life,  the  native 
disposition  will  make  itself  felt,  not  so  much  in  the 
nature  of  the  abstract  objects  for  which  sentiments  of 
liking  and  disliking  are  acquired,  but  rather  in  the 
strength  of  the  various  sentiments  and  the  force  of 
the  emotions  _ Awakened  within  them.  i Bu^  if,  as  is 
more  usually  the  case,  a certain  liberty  of  choice  is 
allowed  to  the  young  mind,  its  native  disposition 
exerts  a greater  selective  influence,  and,  by  determining 
the  choice  of  admired  models,  may  lead  to  a vastly 
greater  development  of  some  of  the  moral  sentiments 
than  of  others.^.^^nd,  no  matter  how  strong  the  mould- 
ing influences  may  be,  they  must  fail  to  develop  any 
strong  sentiment  for  an  abstract  object,  if  that  senti- 
ment involves  or  implies  an  emotional  capacity  or 
instinct  that  is  natively  defective : if,  for  example,  a 
man’s  native  disposition  comprises  only  a w'eak 


ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE  225 


instinct  of  curiosity,  he  will  hardly  acquire  a strong 
sentiment  for  the  life  of  learning  and  research ; if  it 
is  defective  in  the  instinct  of  self-assertion  and  its 
emotion  of  positive  self-feeling,  he  will  hardly  acquire 
a strong  sentiment  for  self-perfection ; if  it  is  defec- 
tive in  the  protective  instinct  and  its  tender  emotion, 
he  will  hardly  acquire  a strong  sentiment  for  altruism 
and  self-sacrifice. 

/^When  the  abstract  sentiments  have  been  acquired, 
they  determine  our  emotional  responses  to  the  conduct 
and  character  of  ourselves  and  others ; the  intellectual  CXiSi  Ci 
process  of  classing  an  act  under  its  proper  heading,  / 

the  apperception  of  it  as  an  act  of  justice,  of  self- 
sacrifice,  or  of  cruelty,  is  apt  to  call  out  at  once  the 
appropriate  emotion  in  some  degree,  and  secures  our 
approval  or  disapproval,  in  accordance  with  the  nature 
of  the  sentiment  we  have  acquired  for  that  quality  or 
class  of  action.  The  objects  of  our  sentiments  of  love 
and  hate  necessarily  become  objects  of  desire  and 
aversion.  Thus,  if  we  have  acquired  the  sentiment  of 
love  of  justice  and  we  are  credibly  informed  that 
any  person  is  in  serious  danger  of  suffering  injustice, 
the  desire  of  justice,  arising  within  the  abstract  senti- 
ment, impels  us  to  efforts  to  secure  justice.^  /The 
strength  of  the  motive,  the  intensity  of  the  desire  or 
aversion  awakened  within  the  system  of  the  sentiment, 
depends  in  such  cases  upon  the  strength  of  the  senti- 
ment./^n  most  men  the  desires  and  aversions  arising 

* The  effective  operation  of  this  sentiment  on  a great  scale 
has  recently  been  illustrated  in  several  cases  in  which  the  most 
disinterested  efforts  of  private  individuals  have  corrected  the 
effects  of  miscarriages  of  legal  procedure — the  cases  of 
Mr.  Beck  and  Mr.  Edalji.  Some  years  ago  the  unjust  con- 
demnation of  Major  Dreyfus  produced  in  France  a still  more 
striking  and  famous  display  of  disinterested  effort  on  behalf 
of  the  principle  of  justice. 


226 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


from  the  abstract  sentiments  are  apt  to  be  much 
inferior  in  strength  to  those  excited  within  the  con- 
4fCrete  sentiments ; hence,  as  motives  of  these  two 
classes  are  frequently  opposed  in  tendency,  the  mere 
possession  of  moral  sentiments  does  not  always  suffice 
to  determine  a man  to  action  in  accordance  with  them. 
A sentiment  of  love  for  an  individual  may,  and  often 
does,  give  rise  to  a desire  that  conflicts  with  the  desire 
for  justice  arising  from  the  sentiment  for  justice ; and 
the  self-regarding  sentiment  with  its  strong  emotions 
is  especially  apt  to  conflict  with  the  moral  sentiments. 
Hence  it  is  possible  for  a man  to  have  the  most 
beautiful  moral  sentiments  and  yet  to  act  in  ways  that 
are  not  altogether  admirable. 

/^Even  the  purely  altruistic  sentiments,  the  love  of 
beneficence  or  of  mankind  in  general,  will  not  neces- 
sarily suffice  to  enable  a man  to  reach  the  highest  plane 
of  conduct — not  even  if  they  are  strong.  The  habit 
of  jelLcrkicism  is_  re  and  this_  implies^  and  arises 

from,  a strong  self-regarding  sentiment.  The  special 


’moral  sentiments  must  be  brought  into  connection 
Iwith,  and  organised  within,  the  system  of  a more 


icomprehensive  sentiment — what  may  be  called  the 
/master  sentiment  among  all  the  moral  sentiments, 
imely,  the  sentiment  for  a perfected  or  completely 
oral  life.  If  a man  acquires  this  sentiment,  he  will 
m at  the  realisation  of  such  a life  for  all  men  as  far 
) possible ; but,  since  he  has  more  control  over  his 
vn  life  than  over  the  lives  of  others,  he  will  naturally 
m at  the  perfection  of  his  own  life  in  the  first  place. 
1 this  sentiment,  then,  the  altruistic  and  egoistic 
notions  and  sentiments  may  find  some  sort  oi 
iconciliation ; that  is  to  say,  they  may  become 
mthesised  in  the  larger  sentiment  of  love  for  an 
leal  of  conduct,  the  realisation  of  which  involves  a 


ADVANCE  TO  THE  HIGHER  PLANE  227 


^due  proportion  of  self-regarding  and  of  altruistic 
action  ; and  the  desire  for  the  realisation  of  this  ideal 
may  become  the  master  motive  to  which  all  the 
abstract  sentiments  lend  whatever  force  they  have. 

At  is  worth  noting  in  passing  that  in  many  persons 
aesthetic  appreciation  of  the  beauty  of  fine  character 
and  conduct  may  play  a large  part  in  the  genesis  of 
the  ideal  of  conduct  and  of  the  sentiment  of  love  for 
this  ideal.  Not  all  admiration  is  aesthetic  admiration, 
but,  if  the  object  that  we  admire  on  account  of  its 
strength  or  excellence  of  any  kind,  presents  a complex 
of  harmoniously  organised  and  centralised  relations 
and  activities,  the  mere  contemplation  of  it  pleases 
us,  in  so  far  as  we  are  capable  of  grasping  the  harmony 
of  its  complex  features ; that  is  to  say,  it  affords  us  an 
aesthetic  satisfaction,  and  therefore  has  a certain  value 
for  us  and  becomes  an  object  of  desire.  A fine 
character,  or  a life  finely  lived,  has  these  aesthetic 
properties,  and  therefore  our  admiration  of  it  will  be 
an  aesthetic  admiration,  in  so  far  as  we  appreciate 
its  harmony  and  unity;  we  are  then  disposed  to 
desire  all  the  more  strongly  that  our  own  character 
shall  be  of  this  nature,  shall  appear  to  the  world,  or 
all  that  part  of  it  whose  opinion  we  most  value,  as 
having  aesthetic  properties  that  lend  it  a certain  dignity 
and  nobility ; our  self-regarding  sentiment  seeks  this 
additional  satisfaction,  we  desire  and  strive  to  realise 
this  aesthetic  ideal. 

desire  result  in  this  _way^^_f^^^^  aesthetic 
appreciation  blends  in  very_  various  j>rqportions  with 
t^  purely  moral  desire_for  the  realisation  of  the  ideal 
of  conduct ; and  in  some  persons  of  the  type  of  Marius 
the  Epicurean  this  desire  may  be  the  principal  factor 
in  the  regulation  of  conduct. 


CHAPTER  IX 


■ 

cf 

VOLITION 

WE  have  now  sketched  the  _l*^_whRh  an 
individual  may  acquire  an  ideal_o/  conduct 
and  the  way  in  which  his  primary^^^^^^^^^  disposi- 

tions, becoming , organised  within  the  complex  moral 
sentiments,  may  impel  him  to_jtrive_^to  realise  such  an 
ide^  We  have  seen  that  both  of  these  achievements, 
the  acquisition  of  the  ideal  and  of  the  sentiment  for  the 
ideal,  are  rendered  possible  only  by  the  absorption  of 
the  more  refined  parts  of  the  moral  tradition,  under  the 
influence  of  some  of  the  personalities  in  whom  it  is 
most  strongly  embodied.  These  persons,  we  said,  exert 
this  influence  upon  us  in  virtue  principally  of  the 
admiration  that  they  evoke  in  us.  This  admiration, 
which  renders  us  receptive  to  their  opinions  and 
examples,  and  responsive  to  their  emotions,  may  be, 
of  course,  and  often  is,  blended  with  fear,  yielding  the 
tertiary  compound  emotion  which  we  call  awe ; and 
this  may  be  further  complicated  by  an  infusion  of  tender 
emotion,  which  renders  the  complex  emotion  one  of 
reverence ; when  the  influence  of  the  persons  who  excite 
these  complex  emotions  becomes  the  more  powerful  in 
proportion  to  the  additional  strength  of  the  complex 
impulses  evoked  by  them. 

It  was,  I think,  in  the  main  because  the  older  moralists 
neglected  to  take  sufificiently  into  account  the  moral 

22i 


VOLITION 


229 


tradition  and  the  way  in  which  it  becomes  impressed 
upon  us,  and  because  they  treated  of  the  individual  in 
artificial  abstraction  from  the  social  relations  through 
which  his  moral  sentiments  are  forced,  that  they  were 
led  to  maintain  the  hypothesis  of  some  special  faculty, 
the  conscience,  or  the  moral  sense  or  instinct,  or  the 
moral  consciousness,^  in  seeking  to  accqunt  for  moral 
conduct. 

But,  though  we  may  have  accounted  for  the  desire  to 
realise  an  ideal  of  conduct,  we  have  still  to  account  for 
the  fact  that  in  some  men  this  motive  acquires  pre- 
dominance over  all  others  and  actually  regulates  their 
conduct  in  almost  all  relations  and  situations.  For 
some  men  acquire  the  ideal  and  the  sentiment,  but  fail 
wholly  or  in  part  to  realise  the  ideal. /We  have  to  recog- 
nise that  the  desire  that  springs  from  the  completed 
[moral  sentiment  is  usually  of  a thin  and  feeble  sort  in 
jcomparison  with  the  fiercer  coarser  desires  that  spring 
Idirectly  from  our  instincts  and  from  our  concrete  senti- 
ments. It  is  therefore  no  matter  for  surprise  that,  in 


* This  hypothesis  is  still  maintained  by  some  modern  writers  of 
repute.  Dr.  Rashdall  (^'Theory  of  Good  and  Evil”)  uses  the  phrase 
**  the  moral  consciousness”  and  makes  it  the  key  of  his  ethical  and 
theological  position.  By  it  he  means  to  denote  the  faculty  of 
judging  of  ethical  value  or  of  judging  anything  to  be  good.  He 
regards  this  faculty  in  the  same  way  as  Kantians  regard  our 
faculties  of  perceiving  spatial  and  temporal  relations,  namely,  as 
one  which,  though  it  may  be  developed  and  refined  by  use,  is 
given  a priori  as  a primary  faculty  of  intuition,  one  not  evolved 
from  more  elementary  forms  of  judgment.  But  he  makes  no 
attempt  to  justify  this  assumption,  on  which  he  hangs  so  great  a 
weight  of  consequences.  Curiously  enough,  while  the  Kantian 
view  of  our  faculties  of  spatial  and  temporal  judgment  is  held  to 
imply  that  such  judgments  have  no  objective  value,  space  and 
time  being  purely  subjective.  Dr.  Rashdall  finds  in  the  assured  a 
priori  character  of  moral  judgment  and  the  moral  consciousness 
his  one  source  of  confidence  in  the  objectivity  of  such  judgments. 


230 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


so  many  cases,  the  acquirement  of  an  ideal  of  conduct 
and  of  the  sentiment  for  it  does  not  suffice  to  secure  its 
realisation.  How,  then,  are  we  to  account  for  the  fact 
that  the  conduct  of  the  good  man  is  in  the  main  regu- 
lated according  to  the  promptings  of  these  weaker 
desires,  and  against  the  stronger  more  urgent  prompting 
of  the  more  primitive  desires?  It  is  this  appearance  of 
the  overcoming  of  the  stronger  by  the  weaker  impulse 
or  motive,  in  so  many  cases  of  right  action  following 
upon  a conflict  of  motives  and  the  exercise  of  moral 
effort,  that  leads  Professor  James  to  define  moral  action 
as  “ action  in  the  line  of  the  greatest  resistance.”  * 

It  is  in  these  cases  of  moral  conflict  that  volition,  or 
effort  of  the  will  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word,  comes 
in  to  determine  the  victory  to  the  side  of  the  weaker 
impulse.  Professor  James  puts  the  matter  schematically 
in  this  way : — 

I (ideal  impulse)  in  itself  weaker  than  P (the  native 
propensity). 

I + E (effort  of  will)  stronger  than  P. 

Professor  James,  like  many  others,  finds  here  an  ulti- 
mate and  irresolvable  problem  in  face  of  which  we  can 
only  say — The  will  exerts  itself  on  the  side  of  the  weaker 
motive  and  enables  it  to  triumph  over  its  stronger 
antagonists,  while  leaving  the  word  “ will  ” simply  as 
the  name  for  this  possibility  of  an  influx  of  energy  that 
works  on  the  side  of  the  weaker  motive,  an  influx  of 
energy  of  whose  source,  causes,  or  antecedents  we  can 
say  nothing.  That  is  to  say.  Professor  James,  failing  to 
carry  the  analysis  of  volition  beyond  the  point  of  deter- 
mining what  the  effects  of  volition  are,  adopts  the 
doctrine  of  indeterminism.  I do  not  propose  to  go  at 
length  into  the  world-old  dispute  between  libertarians 
and  determinists.  But  the  acceptance  of  the  libertarian 
* Principles  of  Psychology/'  vol.  ii.,  p.  549. 


VOLITION 


231 


s 


doctrine  would  be  incompatible  with  any  hope  that  a 
science  of  society,  in  any  proper  sense  of  the  word 
“ science,”  may  be  achieved  ; for  in  face  of  each  of  the 
most  important  problems  of  such  a science,  we  should 
have  to  content  ourselves  with  the  admission  of  im- 
potencefe^ 

j Some  attempt  must  therefore  be  made  to  show  that 
the  effort  of  volition  is  not  the  mysterious  and  utterly 
incomprehensible  process  the  libertarians  would  have  it 
to  be  ; but  that  it  is  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  same 
principles  as  other  modes  of  human  activity ; that  it 
involves  no  new  principles  of  activity  and  energy, 
but  only  a more  subtle  and  complex  interplay  of 
those  impulses  which  actuate  all  animal  behaviour 
and  in  which  the  ultimate  mystery  of  mind  and  life 
resides. 


r 


Xhe_  djsp.ute^Jias^^^  upon  two  different 

A grour^s,  the  and  the  psychological.  On  the 

^ former 'ground  it  has  been  urged,  again  and  again,  that 
if  we  do  not  recognise  freedom  of  the  will,  do  not 
recognise  some  degree  of  independence  of  antecedent 
conditions  in  the  making  of  moral  choice,  we  cannot 


* This  we  may  see  most  clearly  in  the  case  of  the  problem  of 
the  evolution  of  the  moral  tradition.  If,  as  we  have  said,  the 
moral  tradition  has  been  slowly  evolved  by  the  influence  of  the 
precept  and  example  of  the  great  moral  leaders,  and  if,  as  the 
libertarians  maintain,  all  the  moral  victories  of  such  leaders,  in 
virtue  of  which  they  attain  their  ascendancy  over  their  fellow-men 
and  their  power  of  moulding  the  moral  tradition,  have  this 
mysterious  and  utterly  incomprehensible  source,  then  the  growth 
of  the  moral  tradition  may  be  described  but  cannot  be  explained, 
and  we  have  no — or  but  very  little — ground  to  suppose  that  what 
we  can  learn  of  its  growth  in  the  past  will  justify  any  assumptions 
or  forecasts  as  to  its  growth  in  the  future.  And  this  must  remain 
true  no  matter  how  small  be  the  quantity  of  will-energy  postu- 
lated by  the  libertarians  to  account  for  the  turning  of  the  scale  in 
the  conflict  of  motives, 


232 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


recognise  any  moral  responsibility,  and  that,  therefore, 
to  deny  the  freedom  of  the  will  is  to  undermine  all 
morality  and  to  deprive  our  systems  of  rewards  and 
punishments,  of  praise  and  blame,  of  all  logical  justi- 
fication. This  argument  implies  a false  conception  of 
responsibility  and  of  the  proper  nature  and  purpose 
of  rewards  and  punishments,  although  it  has  been  urged 
by  many  persons  who  might  have  been  expected  to 
avoid  this  confusion  of  popular  thought. 

'Responsibility  means  accountability — to  be  responsible 
for  a wrong  action  means  to  be  rightly  liable  to  punish- 
ment. If  to  punish  means  simply  to  inflict  pain  from 
the  motive  of  resentment  or  revenge,  then  it  may  fairly 
be  said  that  it  is  illogical  for  the  determinist  to  hold 
any  one  liable  to  punishment,  i.e.,  responsible,  that  he 
ought  rather  to  say  : “ Poor  fellow,  you  could  not  help 
it;  therefore  I,  recognising  that  you  are  merely  a piece 
of  mechanism,  will  not  ver^t  my  resentment  upon  you, 
you  are  not  responsible.”  ^ut  the  infliction  of  pain 
from  the  motive  of  revenge  or  resentment  is  entirely 
a-moral  or  immoral.  /i*unishment  is  only  justifiable,  is 
only  moral  punishment,  when  inflicted  as  a deterrent 
from  further  wrong-doing,  and  as  an  influence  capable 
of  moulding  character.  That  is  to  say,  men  are  only 
morally  responsible,  or  rightly  liable  to  punishment,  if 
the  punishment  may  fairly  be  expected  to  deter  them 
from  further  wrong-doing,  or  to  modify  their  natures  for 
the  better.*  It  is  for  this  reason  that,  while  we  rightly 
punish  children  and  animals,  we  do  not  punish  madmen. 
These  last  are  not  rightly  liable  to  punishment,  they  are 
not  held  responsible,  because  it  has  been  found  that 
punishment  will  not  exert  on  them  its  normal  deterrent 

I j piirposely  avoid  touching  upon  the  more  difficult  moral 
problem,  How  far  is  punishment  of  one  man  justified  by  its 
deterrent  or  reforming  effects  upon  others  ? 


VOLITION 


233 


and  improving  effects.*  The  attitude  of  the  judge,  or 
father,  who  has  to  punish,  is  then  : “ I punish  you  in 
[order  that  you  may  be  deterred  from  repetition  of  your 
[bad  conduct.  I know  that  you  could  not  help  it,  but, 

?|if  you  are  not  punished,  you  will,  on  the  next  occasion 
|of  temptation,  still  be  unable  to  avoid  misconduct;  ^ 
[whereas,  if  I novv  punish  you,  you  will  in  all  probability!  A 
be  deterred ; and  the  punishment  may  initiate  or  I 
i strengthen  in  you  the  habit  of  control  of  your  impulses, 

’and,  by  inducing  in  you  a greater  regard  for  authority, 
lit  may  set  the  growth  of  your  self-regarding  sentiment  | 

upon  the  right  lines”  In  other  words,  according  to 
;the  determinist  view,  if  a man  is  morally  punishable, 

!?>,,  responsible,  it  is  because  his  wrong  action  was 
I the  outcome  of  his  own  nature,  was  determined  by 
: conditions  of  which  the  most  important  lie  in  his 
1 ^ mental  constitution,  and  because  it  may  reasonably  j 

»be  Jioped  that  punishment  may  modify  his  ^nature  , 
jfor  the  better. 

If  the  opposed  view  is  true,  if  a man’s  voluntary 
actions  are  not  in  the  main  determined  by  conditions 
I comprised  within  the  system  of  his  mental  constitution, 

! the  only  ground  for  punishing  him  must  be  the  emotion 
j of  resentment  or  revenge.  For,  if  the  issues  of  our 
moral  conflicts  are  decided,  not  by  the  conditions  of  our 
I own  natures,  but  by  some  new  beginning,  some  causal 
' factor  having  no  antecedents,  or  by  some  mysterious 
I influence  coming  upon  us  from  an  unknown  source,  a 

I * In  so  far  as  punishment  will  produce  these  effects  upon  mad- 
|i  men  they  have  a moral  right  to  be  punished.  The  medical  pro- 
fession generally  ignores  this  truth  in  its  perennial  conflict  with 
the  lawyers.  It  is  for  them  to  determine  which  of  the  mental 
diseases  render  the  patient’s  conduct  incapable  of  being  con- 
! trolled  by  punishment  or  by  the  threat  of  it,  and  which  leave 
him  still  susceptible  to  the  deterrent  and  reforming  influence  of 
punishment. 


234 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


? 

4 

? 

/ 


prompting  from  God  or  devil — or  from  any  other  source 
the  libertarian  likes  to  assign  it  outside  our  own  natures — 
then  clearly  we  deserve  neither  praise  nor  blame,  neither 
reward  nor  punishment ; and  it  is  useless  to  attempt  to 
modify  the  issue  of  such  conflicts  by  modifying  our 
natures  by  means  of  these  influences.^  That  is  to  say, 
if  the  libertarian  doctrine  is  true,  there  can  be  no  moral 
punishment  of  a wrongdoer,  but  only  vengeful  harming 
of  him,  and  therefore  there  can  be  no  moral  respon- 
sibility. Th^e  ^rgume^  responsibility  is 

therefore,,. ajtpgether  on__the  _side  of  the  determinisf. 
It  Js.  the  ^vocates  of  freewill  who  would  undermine 
moral  responsibility.  _ 

But  there  is  another  argument  for  freewill  based  on 
moral  needs,  which  is  not  to  be  set  aside  so  easily. /^If, 
as  the  determinist  asserts,  each  of  my  actions  is  com- 
pletely determined  by  antecedent  conditions  and  pro- 
cesses that  are  partly  within  my  own  nature,  partly  in 
my  environment,  why  should  I make  any  moral  effort  ? 
My  conduct  will  be  what  it  will  be,  the  issue  of  condi- 
tions that  existed  and  determined  it  in  every  detail 
long  before  I was  born  ; therefore  it  would  be  foolish  of 
me  to  take  pains  to  choose  the  better  course  and  to 
make  efforts  to  realise  it.  -^This  is  the  real  crux  of 
this  dispute.  '^This  is  the  legitimate  inference  from 
determinism.  This  is  its  moral  difficulty,  which  has 


* The  only  possible  answer  of  the  libertarians  to  this  argument 
seems  to  be  : Yes,  but  if  this  outside  influence  is  a very  little 
one,”  we  may,  by  means  of  punishment,  give  the  good  influences 
a better  chance  of  determining  a favourable  issue  of  our  moral 
conflicts.  This  seems  to  be  the  line  recent  defenders  of  freewill 
are  inclined  to  take.  They  are,  nevertheless,  bound  to  admit 
that,  since  the  magnitude  of  these  outside  influences  is  unknown, 
the  recognition  of  them  must  weaken  the  case  for  punishment, 
and  must  diminish  to  an  unknown  and  quite  incalculable  extent 
our  moral  responsibility. 


VOLITION 


235 


seldom  been  squarely  faced  by  its  advocates,  and  never 
overcome  by  them.  To  say,  as  so  many  of  them  say, 
that  we  are  free  to  act  in  accordance  with  our  own 
natures,  that  the  conditions  of  our  actions  are  within 
us,  and  that  this  is  all  the  freedom  that  any  reasonable 
man  can  desire — to  say  this  does  not  remove,  or  in  any 
degree  lessen,  this  moral  difificulty.  Such  reflections 
may,  no  doubt,  be  satisfactory  enough  to  those  who 
believe  that  their  own  natures  are  above  serious 
reproach,  but  not  to  those  who  can  point  to  un- 
desirable ancestry  and  unmistakable  flaws  in  their 
native  dispositions.  /^sTothing  is  more  difficult  than  to 
give  any  helpful  answer  to  one  who  adopts  this  line 
of  justification  for  moral  slackness ; we  can  only  hold 
him  responsible  and  punish  him.  One  may  suspect 
that  the  determinists,  most  of  whom  try  to  put  aside 
this  difficulty  by  some  scornful  reference  to  Oriental 
fatalism,  are  in  general  really  afraid  of  it,  and  have 
entered  into  a conspiracy  resolutely  to  ignore,  since 
they  cannot  dispel,  this  dark  shadow  on  human  life. 

But  psychology  must  not  allow  its  investigations  and 
theories  to  be  biased  by  moral  needs ; and  it  must  not 
easily  accept,  as  evidence  in  favour  of  freewill,  the  diffi- 
culty of  finding  in  our  mental  constitution  the  source  of 
that  influx  of  energy  which  seems  to  play  the  decisive 
role  in  volition.^ 

* The^JSiosLsuscessfi^^  defejnce,  of  mdetw  is 

thaipf^r.  Humanism'*).  His  position  is  not 

quite  the  same  as  Professor  James's.  He  suggests  that  there  may 
arise  conjunctions  of  conditions  whose  issue  is  indeterminate  in 
the  sense  that  opposing  forces  are  exactly  balanced  in  an  unstable 
equilibrium,  which  we  might  compare  to  that  of  a billiard  ball 
balanced  on  a knife-edge.  A strictly  minimal  force  might  then 
determine  the  issue  in  either  direction,  and  so  produce  very 
important  consequences  ; e.g.,  if  the  knife-edge  were  on  the  water- 
parting  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  the  ball  might  reach  the  Atlantic 


236 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


The  gsj;;cliolggic^  problem  we  have  to  face  is,  then, 
this : Can  we  give  any  psychological  account  of  the 
conditions  of  the  effort  of  will,  which,  being  thrown 
on  the  side  of  the  weaker,  more  ideal  motive,  may 
cause  it  to  prevail  over  the  coarser,  more  primitive, 
and  stronger  motive? 

We  have  recognised  that  all  impulses,  all  desires  and 
aversions,  all  motives — in  short,  all  conations — fall  into 
two  classes:  (i)  those  that  arise  from  the  excitement 
of  some  innate  disposition  or  instinct ; (2)  those  that 
arise  on  the  excitement  of  dispositions  acquired  during 

or  the  Pacific  Ocean,  according  to  the  direction  of  this  minimal 
force.  Dr.  Schiller  points  out  truly  enough  that,  for  anything 
we  know,  such  situations  may  occur  in  both  the  physical  and 
moral  spheres ; for,  if  their  issue  is  thus  determined  by  some 
such  minimal  force  that  is  not  determined  by  antecedent  condi- 
tions, the  calculation  of  the  strength  of  the  opposing  forces,  with 
sufficient  accuracy  to  enable  us  to  discover  the  presence  of  this 
unconditioned  factor,  is  beyond  our  power,  and  we  shall  probably 
never  be  able  to  make  this  calculation  for  the  physical,  and  cer- 
tainly never  for  the  moral,  world.  If  this  unconditioned  factor 
is  assumed  to  be  in  every  case  of  strictly  minimal  strength,  the 
admission  of  its  reality  will  not  seriously  undermine  the  prin- 
ciples of  moral  responsibility  ; but  it  will,  as  pointed  out  above, 
introduce  an  incalculable  element  among  the  factors  which  the 
student  of  society  has  to  try  to  take  into  account,  and  therefore 
will  make  difficult  if  not  impossible  the  attempt  to  construct 
a science  of  history  and  of  society.  ^Whether  it  would  lighten 
f in  any  degree  the  moral  difficulty  of  determinism  discussed 
) above  is  a more  difficult  and  subtle  problem  ; I cannot  at  present 
\ see  that  it  can  have  any  such  result,  save  in  the  following  way : 


it  would  allow  us  to  believe  in  "a  power,  not  ourselves,  that 


makes  for  righteousness,"  and  such  a belief  might  encourage 


and  stimulate  us  to  mak^  efforts  towards  the  realisation  of  the 


' purpose  of  that  power.  ince,  then,  a decision  of  this  question 
\ cannot  be  attained  on  empirical  grounds,  it  remains  open  to  us 
) to  postulate  indeterminism  ; and  if  such  postulation  makes  for 
( the  predominance  of  right  conduct,  it  is  difficult  to  find  any  good 
) reason  for  refusing  to  follow  James  and  Schiller  when  they  ask 
ns  to  commit  ourselves  to  it. 


VOLITION 


237 


the  life  of  the  individual  by  differentiation  from  the 
innate  dispositions,  under  the  guidance  of  pleasure  and 
of  pain.  We  may,  then,  restate  our  problem  in  more 
general  terms,  as  follows  volition  only  a specially 
complex  case  of  conation,  implying  some  conjunction  of 
conations  of  these  two  origins  rendered  possible  by  the 
systematic  organisation  of  the  innate  and  acquired 
dispositions  ? Or  does  it  involve  some  motive  power, 
some  source  of  energy,  some  power  of  striving,  of  an 
altogether  different  order?  Clearly  we  must  attempt 
to  account  for  it  in  terms  of  the  former  alternative,  and 
we  may  only  adopt  the  latter  if  the  attempt  gives  no 
promise  of  success,  .^it  may  fairly  be  claimed,  I think, 
that  we  can  vaguely  understand  the  way  in  which  all 
volition  may  be  accounted  for  as  a special  case  of 
conation,  differing  from  other  conations,  not  in  kind, 
but  only  in  complexity.-^^^^e  may  see  this  most  clearly 
if  we  form  a scale  of  conations  ranging  from  the  simplest 
type  to  the  most  complex  and  obscure  type,  namely, 
moral  choice  achieved  by  an  effort  which,  in  the  struggle 
of  higher  and  lower  motives,  brings  victory  to  the  side 
of  the  higher  but  weaker  motive.  If  types  of  conation 
can  be  arranged  in  such  a scale,  each  type  differing 
from  its  neighbours  only  very  slightly,  that  will  afford  a 
strong  presumption  of  continuity  of  the  scale ; for  if 
volition  involves  some  peculiar  factor,  not  operative  in 
other  conations,  we  ought  to  be  able  to  draw  a sharp 
line  between  the  volitional  and  the  non-volitional 
conations.  That  such  a scale  can  be  made  is,  I think, 
indisputable  ; and  an  attempt  to  illustrate  it  will  be 
m^e  on  a later  page. 

^^ut,  though  we  cannot  draw  any  sharp  line  between 
volitions  and  conations  of  other  types,  it  is  convenient 
and  justifiable  to  reserve  the  name  volition,”  or  act 
of  will,  for  a particular  class  of  conations,  and  we  must 


238 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


first  try  to  determine  what  are  the  marks  of  the 
conations  of  this  class. 

Some  authors  do  not  recognise  this  distinction,  but 
describe  all  conations,  every  form  of  mental  activity, 
as  issuing  from  the  will.  For  Schopenhauer,  for 
example,  the  blind  appetitions  displayed  by  lowly 
organisms  were  acts  of  will,  equally  with  our  greatest 
moral  efforts ; for  Professor  Bain  there  was  no  such 
distinction,  because  he  regarded  all  activities  as  alike 
prompted  simply  by  pleasure  or  pain,  as  efforts  to 
secure  pleasure  or  to  escape  from  pain.  And  it  was 
for  many  years  a common  practice  to  class  all  bodily 
movements  as  either  unconscious  reflex  actions  or 
voluntary  actions.  But  of  late  v^ars  increase  of  in- 
sight into  the  simpler  modes  of  action  and  the  better 
comprehension  of  the  large  part  they  play  in  our  lives, 
have  led  to  the  general  recognition  df  the  propriety  of 
the , distinction  of  volitional  and  non-yoHti^^^  conations. 

^ iderbert  Spencer  and  others,  confining  their  attention  to 
the  conations  expressed  in  bodily  movements,  have 
regarded  as  volitional  all  movements  that  are  imme- 
diately preceded  by  the  idea  of  the  movement.^  But 
this  precedence  of  the  idea  of  movement  is  merely 
the  mark  of  ideo>motor  action,  and  many  such  move- 
ments take  place  in  an  automatic  or  machine-like 
fashion  that  is  very  different  from  unmistakable 
volition. 

y^'^thers  adopt  as  the  criterion  of  volitional  action  its 
antece_dence  by  the  idea  or  representation  of  the  end 
to  be  achieved  by  it.  But  this  is  common  to  all  action 
prompted  by  desire,  to  all  conation  that  is  not  mere 
blind  appetition.  And  a man  may  struggle  against 

* This  view  seems  to  be  maintained  still  by  Professor 
in  a recent  article  in  the  Revue  Philosophique  (1907),  ‘‘ Sur  la 
Nature  de  la  Volonte.’* 


VOLITION 


239 


the  prompting  of  a desire  whose  end  is  clearly  repre- 
sented. We  commonly  and  properly  say  in  such  cases 
that  the  man’s  will,  or  the  man  himself,  struggles  against 
the  desire  and  masters  it,  or  is  mastered  by  it.  Clearly, 
then,  volition  is  something  other,  and  more,  than  simple 
desire,  and  more  than  desire  issuing  in  action,  ^i^or  can 
we  be  content  to  regard  as  volitional  every  action  issuing 
from  a conflict  of  desires  ; for  such  conflicts  take  place 
on  a plane  of  mental  development  lower  than  that  at 
which  volition  proper  becomes  possible. 

(V^'^rofessor  Stout,^  criticising  Mr.  Shand’s  conclusion 
that  a volition  is  a unique  differentiation  of  conation, 
a special  form  of  conation  that  is  incapable  of  being 
analysed  or  described, 2 puts  the  problem  in  this  way : 
“ How  does  a volition  differ  from  a desire  ? ” the 

answer  he  proposes  is  that  a “volition  is  a desire 
qualified  and  defined  by  the  judgment  that,  so  far  as 
in  us  lies,  we  shall  bring  about  the  attainment  of  the 
desired  end.”  That  volition  involves  such  a judgment 
is  true,  I think,  of  the  special  class  of  volitions  we  call 
resolutions,  but  not  of  all  volitions  ; and,  even  if  it  were 
true  of  all,  it  certainly  would  not  adequately  describe 
the  difference  between  desire  and  volition.  We  have 
seen  that  in  the  typical  case  of  volition,  that  of  hard 
moral  choice,  the  effort  of  will  somehow  supports  or 
re-enforces  the  weaker  motive,  and  enables  it  to  get 
the  better  of  the  stronger  motive.  Now,  a mere  judg- 
ment has  no  such  motive  power  ; rather,  the  judgment, 
“ I shall  do  this  and  not  that  ” is  merely  the  mode  in 
which  the  accomplished  volition  is  explicitly  expressed 
when  the  circumstances  demanding  the  one,  or  the 
other,  mode  of  action  lie  still  in  the  future;  the  judg- 
ment is  an  effect  of,  rather  than  the  essence  of,  the 
volitional  process. 

* Mind/^  New  Series,  voL  v. 


Ibid.,  vol.  iv. 


240 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


The  essential  jnark^of  wli^n — that  which  dis- 
jtinguishes  it  from  simple  desire,  or  simple  conflict  of 
desires — is  that  the  personality  as  a whole,  or  the 
central  feature  or  nucleus  of  the  personality,  the  man 
himself,  or  all  that  which  is  regarded  by  himself 
and  others  as  the  most  essential  part  of  himself,  is 
thrown  upon  the  side  of  the  weaker  motive ; whereas 
a mere  desire  may  be  felt  to  be  something  that,  in 
comparison  with  this  most  intimate  nucleus  of  the 
personality,  is  foreign  to  the  self,  a force  that  we  do 
not  acknowledge  as  our  own,  and  which  we,  or  the 
intimate  self,  may  look  upon  with  horror  and 
detestation. 

Before  following  up  this  clue  and  attempting  to  trace 
the  source  of  this  energy  with  which  the  idea  of  the  self 
seems  to  support  one  of  the  conflicting  motives,  we 
must  ask.  What  is  the  immediate  effect  of  volition  ? 
r^ccording  to  a widely  accepted  view  we  can  only  will 
a movement  of  some  part  of  the  body.  This  view  is 
explicitly  maintained  by  Bain,  and  has  received  the 
endorsement  of  Professor  Stout.  Yet  it  is,  I think, 
quite  indefensible.  We  may,  and  often  do,  effectively 
will  the  continuance  of  a sensation  or  an  idea  in 
consciousness ; by  an  effort  of  will  one  can  maintain 
at  the  focus  of  consciousness  a presentation  or  idea, 
which,  but  for  the  volition,  would  be  driven  out  of  the 
focus  by  other  ideas  or  sense-impressions.  Those  who 
accept  the  view  that  we  can  will  only  a movement,  or  a 
motor  adjustment  of  some  kind,  usually  try  to  explain 
away  these  cases  of  voluntary  direction  of  attention  to 
sense-impressions  or  objects  of  any  kind,  by  saying 
that  in  these  cases  the  immediate  effect  of  volition  is 
merely  some  appropriate  muscular  adjustment  of  a 
sense-organ,  which  adjustment  aids  indirectly  in  main- 
taining the  idea  or  sense-impression  at  the  focus  of 


VOLITION 


241 


consciousness.  Thus  Dr.  Stout  writes : **  The  volition 
to  attend  is  strictly  analogous  to  the  volition  to  move 
the  arm,  or  perform  any  other  bodily  action.  It  follows 
from  this  that  our  voluntary  command  of  attention 
must  depend  on  our  voluntary  command  of  the  motor 
processes  of  fixation.”  ^ But,  though  the  statement  of 
the  former  of  these  two  sentences  is  unimpeachable,  the 
conclusion  drawn  in  the  second  has  no  logical  connec- 
tion with  it.  '-  It  would  seem  that  this  doctrine  owes  its 
prevalence  to  the  fact  that  the  sequence  of  movement 
upon  volition  to  move  is  an  immediately  observable 
and  undeniable  fact,  one  so  familiar  that  we  are  apt  to 
overlook  the  inexplicable  and  mysterious  nature  of  the 
sequence,  and  to  accept  it  as  a matter  of  course ; just 
as  most  of  us  accept  as  a matter  of  course  the  equally 
mysterious,  inexplicable,  and  familiar  sequence  of  sensa- 
tion upon  stimulation  of  a sense-organ. 

"^here  are  two  sufficient  grounds  for  rejecting  this 
doctrine.  First,  desire  notoriously  tends  to  maintain 
the  idea  of  its  object  or  end  at  the  focus  of  con- 
sciousness ; our  thought  keeps  flying  back  to  dwell 
on  that  which  we  strongly  desire,  in  spite  of  our 
best  efforts  to  banish  the  idea  of  it  from  our  minds. 

This  power  of  desire  to  maintain  the  desired  object 
at  the  focus  of  consciousness,  to  keep  our  attention 
directed  to  such  an  object,  is,  like  the  persistent  bodily 
striving  that  characterises  all  conation  and  marks  off 
such  action  most  clearly  from  mechanical  process,  the 
immediate  expression  of  psychical  work,  and  involves, 
as  was  said  above,  the  central  mystery  of  life  and  mind 
and  of  their  relation  to  matter.  No  one  contends  that 
desire  maintains  the  presentation  of  its  end  indirectly 
only  by  way  of  motor  adjustments ; such  maintenance 
is  rather  an  essential  and  immediate  effect  of  every 

‘ Analytic  Psychology  voi.  i.,  p.  243. 

K 


242 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


impulse  that  rises  above  the  level  of  blind  appetition 
and  becomes  conscious  of  its  end.  Why,  then,  should 
we  deny  to  volition,  which  is  desire  and  more  than 
desire,  a power  that  desire  unmiotakably  possesses  ? 
Secondly,  that  volitional  effort  can  directly  maintain 
a presentation  at  the  focus  of  consciousness  may  easily 
be  shown  by  appropriate  experiment* 

We  must,  then,  reverse  the  position ; instead  of 
saying  that  volitional  direction  of  attention  is  an 
indirect  effect  of  volitional  innervation  of  some  mus- 
cular apparatus,  we  must  recognise  that  volitional 
linnervation  of  muscles  is  but  a special  case  of  voli- 
jtion,  and  that  the  essential  and  immediate  effect  of  all 
volition  is  the  maintenance  of  a presentation  at  the 
focus  ot  consciousness.  For,  when  we  will  a movement, 
;we  do  but  re-enforce  the  idea  of  that  movement  so  that 
it  tends  more  strongly  to  issue  in  movement.  We  may 
therefore  follow  Professor  James  when  he  asserts  that 
“ the  essential  achievement  of  the  will  is  to  attend  to  a 
difficult  object  and  hold  it  fast  before  the  mind,”  and, 
again,  that  “effort  of  attention  is  thus  the  essential 
phenomenon  of  will.”  In  the  special  case  in  which 
jthe  object  to  which  we  direct  our  attention  by  a voli- 
itional  effort  is  a bodily  movement,  the  movement 
I follows  immediately  upon  the  idea  in  virtue  of  that 
mysterious  connection  between  them  of  which  we 
know  almost  nothing  beyond  the  fact  that  it  obtains. 
fj Effort  of  attention  _is,  then, Jthe  essential  form  of  all 
ydition,  And  this  formulation  of  the  volitional  process, 

' Experiments  that  seem  to  establish  this  point  were  described 
by  the  author  in  the  fourth  of  the  series  of  papers  entitled 
“ Physiological  Factors  of  the  Attention-Process,"  “ Mind,” 
N.S.,  vol.  XV.  Some  of  these  experiments  have  since  been 
repeated  and  confirmed  by  MM.  Et.  Maigre  and  H.  Pieron 
(Rtvue  de  Psychiatric  et  de  Psychologic  Expirimental,  Avril,  1907). 


VOLITION 


243 


the  holding  of  an  idea  at  the  focus  of  consciousness  by 
an  effort  of  attention,  covers  every  instance  of  volition. 
het  us  consider  a few  of  the  principal  types  of  volitional 
effect.  In  deliberation  we  have  the  ideas  of  two  dif- 
ferent lines  of  action  rising  alternately  to  the  focus  of 
consciousness,  either  one  being  checked  or  inhibited 
by  the  other  before  it  can  determine  action; /in  the 
act  of  volitional  choice  we  give  permanence  and 
dominance  to  the  one  idea,  and  in  so  doing  we  exclude 
the  other  more  or  less  completely  from  consciousness. 
*^gain,  in  making  a resolution  to  follow  a certain  line 
of  conduct,  we  form  as  clear  an  idea  as  possible  of  that 
line  of  conduct,  and  we  hold  the  idea  steadily  before 
the  mind  by  an  effort  of  attention.  It  is  true  that  we 
may  formulate  our  resolution  in  the  form  of  a judgment 
— I am  going  to  do  this  ; but  that  is  something  addi- 
tional, not  an  essential  part  of  the  volitional  process, 
'^nce  more,  in  volitional  recollection  of  some  fact  we 
have  forgotten,  the  name  of  a man  of  whom  we  are 
thinking,  our  volition  merely  holds  the  idea  of  this  man 
before  consciousness,  so  that  it  has  the  opportunity  to 
develop  its  various  aspects,  its  associative  setting,  the 
place  and  time  and  company  in  which  we  have  seen  the 
man  ; all  of  which,  of  course,  increases  the  chance  that 
his  name  will  be  reproduced  or  recollected. 

We  have  now  to  go  on  to  the  more  serious  part  of 
tjie  problem  of  volition,  and  to  ask,  Can  we  give  any 
account  of  the,  process  that  results  in  this  holding  of 
a presentation  at  the  focus_of ^consciousness 
) exclusion  of  rival  presentations  ? The  thorough-going 
(Hibertarian  should  reply:  ‘‘No,  this  act  of  will,  this 
^holding  of  the  attention,  is  not  conditioned  by  the 
mind  or  character,  it  has  no  antecedents  in  the  mental 
processes  of  the  subject  who  is  said  to  will,  there- 
fore we  may  not  hope  to  give  any  psychological 


244 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


account  of  its  antecedents  or  conditions,  if  it  has  any.” 
Professor  James  does  not  go  quite  so  far  as  this ; 
having  correctly  defined  the  essential  effect  of  volition, 
he  claims  to  be  able  to  trace  one  step  backwards  the 
process  of  which  it  is  the  issue.  He  tells  us  that  the 
holding  fast  of  the  one  idea  at  the  focus  of  conscious- 
ness is  effected  by  suppressing  or  inhibiting  all  rival 
ideas  that  tend  to  exclude  it ; the  favoured  idea  then 
persists  in  virtue  of  its  own  energy  and  works  its 
appropriate  effects,  whether  in  the  production  of  bodily 
movement  or  in  the  determination  of  the  further  course 
of  mental  process. 

Professor  Wundt  teaches  a very  similar  doctrine. 
For  him  volition  is  one  aspect  of  apperception,  and 
apperception  is  essentially  the  inhibition  of  all  pre- 
sentations save  the  one  that  rises  to  the  focus  of 
consciousness.  y^According  to  these  two  great  authori- 
ties, then,  volition  is  essentially  a negative  function,  an 
inhibiting  of  irrelevant  presentations.-^But  neither  of 
them  explains  how  the  inhibition  is  effected,  whence 
comes  the  inhibiting  force,  or  what  are  the  conditions 
of  its  operation.  Presumably,  according  to  Professor 
James,  this  is  where  every  attempt  to  trace  the  volitional 
process  from  its  effects  backwards  comes  against  a dead 
wall  of  mystery,  because  the  inhibiting  stroke  issues 
from  some  region  inaccessible  to  our  intellects,  or 
simply  happens  without  antecedents. 

But  this  doctrine  of  the  primarily  inhibitive  charactei 
of  the  volitional  process  is,  I think,  a false  scent ; and 
it  is  not  to  be  expected  that  we  can  successfully  trace 
back  the  process,  if  we  make  this  false  start.  What 
gives  it  a certain  plausibility  is  the  fact  that  volitional 
attention,  like  all  attention,  involves  inhibition  of  all 
presentations  other  than  the  one  held  at  the  focus  of 
consciousness-}^ut  this  inhibition  is  a secondary  or  col- 


VOLITION 


245 


lateral  result  of  the  essential  process,  which  is  primarily 
a re-enforcement  of  the  one  idea,  the  idea  of  the  end 
that  we  will.  Throughout  the  nervous  system,  with  the 
exception  possibly  of  those  most  primitive  parts  directly 
concerned  in  the  control  of  the  visceral  organs,  inhibi- 
tion always  has  this  character,  appears  always  as  the 
negative  aspect,  or  complementary  result,  of  a positive 
process  of  innervation.  There  is  no  good  evidence  of 
inhibiting  impulses  sent  out  to  the  muscles  of  the 
voluntary  system ; and  we  control  involuntary  ten- 
dencies either  by  innervating  antagonistic  muscles,  or 
by  directing  our  attention  elsewhere  by  an  effort  of 
will ; that  is  to  say,  bv  concentrating  the  energy 
oOhe,  miM.md  syjtemjn^^ 

withdraw  it  from,  or  prevent  its  flowing  in,  any  other 
direction.  v^We  may  see  this  most  clearly  when  we 
attempt  to  txert  volitional  control  over  the  deep-seated 
sensation-reflexes,  such  as  the  tendency  to  sneeze  or 
the  tendency  to  flinch  under  a sudden  pain  or  threat. 
Most  of  us  learn  to  suppress  a sneeze  by  volitionally 
accentuating  the  energy  of  the  respiratory  movements 
— we  make  regular,  rapid  and  forced  inspirations  and 
expirations  ; and  in  order  to  avoid  flinching  or  winking 
we  strongly  innervate  some  group  of  muscles,  perhaps 
almost  the  whole  muscular  system,  but  most  habitually 
and  most  strongly  the  muscles  of  the  jaw,  brow,  and 
hands.  And  all  the  other  instances  of  inhibitions  that 
play  so  large  a part  in  our  mental  and  nervous  life 
appear  to  be  of  this  type,  the  supplementary  or  negative 
aspects  of  positive  excitations.^  We  must  not,  then, 

* For  a fuller  discussion  of  this  question  and  a theory  of  the 
inhibitory  process  see  a paper  by  the  author,  The  Nature  of 
Inhibitory  Processes  within  the  Nervous  System*'  in  Brain,*’ 
vol.  xxvi.,  and  his  review  of  Professor  Sherrington's  Integrative 
Action  of  the  Nervous  System"  in  Brain,’*  vol.  xxx, 


246 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


reverse  the  order,  as  Wundt  and  Janies  do,  in  the  case 
of  volition  and  make  inhibition  the  primary  and  essen- 
tial aspect  of  the  process. must  conclude  that 
volition  essentially  involves  a positive  increase  of  the 
energy  with  which  an  idea  maintains  itself  in  con- 
sciousness and  plays  its  part  in  determining  bodily 
and  mental  processes. 

, ; So  we  come  back  from  our  brief  discussion  of  the 
jviews  of  other  writers  to  the  position  that  in  the  typical 
lease  of  volition,  when  in  the  conflict  of  two  motives  the 
iwill  is  thrown  on  the  side  of  one  of  them  and  we  make 
la  volitional  decision,  we  in  some  way  add  to  the  energy 
jwith  which  the  idea  of  the  one  desired  end  maintains 
.itself  in  opposition  to  its  rival. 

This  conclusion  constitutes  an  important  step  towards 
the  answer  to  the  question  with  which  we  set  out — Is 
volition  merely  a specially  complex  conjunction  of  the 
conative  tendencies  of  the  - two  kinds  that  we  have 
recognised  from  the  outset?  For  it  shows  us  that 
thfi..  e^ssential  operation  of  volition  is  the  same  as  that 
of  desire,  namely,  the  holding  the  idea  of  the  end  at 
the  focus  of  consciousness  so  that  it  works  strongly 
towards  the  realisation  of  its  end,  prevailing  over  rival 
ideas  and  tendencies. 

^ We  are  now  in  a position  to  follow  up  the  clue  that 

■ we  left  on  one  side  some  little  way  back.  We  recog- 
nised that  in  the  typical  case  of  volition  a man’s  self, 
in  some  peculiarly  intimate  sense  of  the  word  “ self,”  is 
thrown  upon  the  side  of  the  motive  that  is  made 
to  prevail. 

That  the  empirical  self,  the  idea  of  his  self  that  each 
man  entertains,  plays  an  essential  part  in  volition  has 
been  widely  recognised.  The  recognition  seems  to  be 
implied  by  the  obscure  dictum,  approved  by  Mr. 
Bradley  and  several  other  writers,  that  in  volition 


VOLITION 


247 


we  identify  the  self  with  the  end  of  the  action.  It 
was  expressed  by  Dr.  Stout  when  he  wrote  that  the 
judgment,  “I  am  going  to  do  this'*  is  the  essential 
feature  of  volition  by  which  it  is  distinguished  from 
desire ; and  it  is  more  clearly  expressed  in  his  latest 
volume,^  where  he  writes,  ^ywhat  is  distinctive  of 
voluntary  de£isiou_  is  the  intervention  of  self-coii- 
sciousness  as  a.  co-operating  factor."  But  he  does  not,  I 
think,  make  quite  clear  how  self-consciousness  plays 
this  role.2 

No  mere  idea  has  a motive  power  that  can  for  a 
mpnient  withstand  the^^^^^f^^  except 

only  the  pathologically  fixed  ideas  of  action,  and  the 
quasi-pathological  ideas  of  action  introduced  to  the 
mind  by  hypnotic  suggestion.3  And  the  idea  of 
the  self  is  no  exception  to  this  rule.  The  idea  of 
the  self,  or  self-consciousness,  is  able  to  play  its 
great  role  in  volition  only  in  virtue  of  the  self-regard- 
ing sentiment,  the  system  of  emotional  and  conative 

• **  The  Groundwork  of  Psychology.*' 

■ Some  authors  wax  scornful  when  they  examine  the  statement 
that  the  self  is  the  all-important  factor  in  volition.  But  the  view 
they  scornfully  reject  is  that  which  makes  the  abstract  ego,  the 
logical  subject  of  all  our  experiences,  or  the  transcendental  self, 
the  source  of  the  power  of  the  will.  If  self  is  meant  to  be  taken 
in  either  of  these  two  senses  in  this  connection,  the  scorn  of 
these  writers  is  perhaps  justifiable  when  they  stigmatise  it  as  a 
mere  metaphysical  abstraction.  It  is  for  this  reason  better  to  say 
always  the  idea  of  self  (rather  than  simply  the  selH  is  an  essential 
iafikQrlujLQlitipn. 

* Ideas  of  this  latter  kind  have  not  the  irresistible  force  often 
attributed  to  them.  Dr.  Bramwell  has  argued  very  strongly  that 
if  they  are  opposed  to  the  organised  tendencies  of  the  subject 
they  will  in  no  case  realise  themselves  in  action  ('*  Hypnotism, 
its  History,  Theory,  and  Practice”).  In  my  opinion  his  view 
is  in  the  main  correct,  though,  no  doubt,  he  has  a little 
overdriven  it 


2^8 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


dispositions  that  is  organised  about  the  idea  of  the  self 
and  is  always  brought  into  play  to  some  extent  when  the 
idea  of  the  self  rises  to  the  focus  of  consciousness^  The 
^ conations^  the  desires  and  aversions ^ arising  within  this 
\self-regarding  sentiment  are  the  motive  forces  whichy 
adding  themselves  to  the  weaker  ideal  motive  in  the 
)case  of  moral  effort^  enable  it  to  win  the  mastery  over 
some  stronger^  coarser  desire  of  our  primitive  animal 
^nature  and  to  banish  from  consciousness  the  idea  of  the 
end  of  this  desire. 

/in  the  absence  of  a strong  self-regarding  senti- 
ment, the  idea  of  the  self,  no  matter  how  rich  and 
how  accurate  its  content,  can  play  but  a feeble  part 
in  the  regulation  of  conduct,  and  can  exert  little 
or  no  influence  in  moral  choice.^'^^Ve  may  see  this 
clearly  if  we  imagine  the  case  of  a man  who  com- 
bines full  and  accurate  self-knowledge  with  almost 
complete  lack  of  self-respect  and  pride.  The  case  is 
hardly  realised,  because,  as  we  have  seen,  advance 
in  self-knowledge  depends  upon  the  existence  of  the 
self-regarding  sentiment.  But  it  is  approximately 
realised  by  men  who,  having  attained  self-knowledge, 
afterwards,  through  a series  of  moral  misfortunes,  lose 
their  self-respect  more  or  less  completely.  In  such  a 
man  accurate  self-knowledge  would  simply  enable  him 
to  foresee  more  accurately  than  others  what  things 
would  bring  him  the  greatest  satisfactions  and  pains, 
and  to  foretell  his  own  conduct  under  given  conditions. 
He  might  become  a very  paragon  of  prudence,  but 
hardly  of  virtue.  Such  a man  might  have  acquired 
and  might  retain  admirable  moral  sentiments;  he 
might  even  have  formed  an  ideal  of  conduct  and 
character,  and  might  entertain  for  this  ideal  a senti- 
ment that  led  him  to  desire  its  realisation  both  for 
himself  and  others.  But,  if  he  had  lost  his  self-respect, 


VOLITION 


249 


if  his  self-regarding  sentiment  had  decayed,  his  conduct 
might  be  that  of  a villain  in  spite  of  his  accurate 
self-knowledge  and  his  moral  sentiments.  On  each 
occasion  on  which  a desire,  springing  from  a moral 
sentiment,  came  into  conflict  with  one  of  the  coarser 
and  stronger  desires,  it  would  be  worsted  ; for  there 
would  be  no  support  for  it  forthcoming  from  the  senti- 
ment of  self-respect.  ^'ISomething  like  this  is,  I take 
it,  the  condition  of  the  man  who  becomes  an  habitual 
drunkard  after  acquiring  admirable  moral  sentiments. 
He  may  still  desire  the  realisation  of  all  that  is  good 
and  moral,  and  may  have  a lofty  ideal  of  conduct ; but, 
if  he  has  become  known  to  all  the  world  as  a sot  and 
has  become  aware  of  the  fact,  he  can  no  longer  find  in 
his  self-regarding  sentiment  a support  for  his  better, 
more  ideal,  motives.  Whereas,  so  long  as  his  drinking 
is  secret  and  is  preceded  on  each  occasion  by  a struggle 
in  which  his  ^fiitxespect  takes  part  with  his  moral  sen- 
timents against  the  desire  for  drink,  there  is  still  room 
for  hope  that  he  may  reform  his  habits. 

\ We  may,  then,  define  volition  as  t/ze  supporting  or 
.re-enforcing  of  a desire  or  conation  by  the  co-operation 
of  an  impulse  excited  within  the  system  of  the  self 
\regarding  sentiment, 

' Since,  as  we  have  seen,  the  growth  of  the  self-regard- 
ing sentiment  is  a gradual  process,  there  can  be  no 
sharp  line  drawn  between  complex  conations  that  are 
volitional  and  those  that  are  not.  Between,  on  the 
one  hand,  the  simple  desire  conscious  of  its  end  but 
not  complicated  by  self-consciousness,  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  moral  effort  that  gives  the  victory  to  the  ideal 
motive — which  is  volition  in  the  fullest  sense — there  is  a 
large  range  of  complex  conations  in  which  the  self- 
regarding  emotions  and  conations  play  parts  of  all 
jdegrees  of  importance  and  refinement.  It  is  instruc- 


250 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


tive  and  important  for  our  purpose  to  devise  cases 
illustrating  the  principal  stages  in  the  transition  from 
simple  conflict  of  impulses  to  volition,  in  the  fullest 
sense. 

Let  us  take,  as  illustrating  the  stages  in  this  scale : — 
The  case  of  a child  who  desires  food  that  is  in 
a dark  room  and  who  is  impelled  in  opposite  direc- 
tions by  this  desire  and  by  his  fear  of  the  dark  place. 
If  either  impulse  overcomes  the  other  and  action 
follows,  that  is  not  a case  of  volition. 

^ Suppose  that  the  child  has  been  punished  on 
some  previous  occasion  because  his  fear  has  overcome 
him,  and  suppose  that  the  memory  of  this  punishment 
and  his  aversion  to  it  enable  his  desire  for  food  to  over- 
come his  fear.  Is  that  a case  of  volition?  In  the 
simplest  conceivable  case  of  behaviour  of  this  sort,  such 
as  might  be  exhibited  by  a young  child  or  a dog,  I 
should  say  no. 

^ But,  if  the  child  has  attained  some  degree  of  self- 
consciousness  and  says,  ‘‘  I don't  want  to  be  punished, 
so  I will  go  and  get  it,”  we  might  perhaps  call  this 
volition  of  the  lowest  grade. 

^ As  illustrations  of  stages  successively  higher  in 
the  scale,  suppose  the  child  to  say,  “ I must  go  and  get 
it,  for  mother  will  scold  me  if  I don't '' ; or  again — 

5.  “ I will  do  it  because,  if  I don't,  the  other  boys 
wilt  call  me  a coward.” 

d Or  let  him  say,  “ I will  do  it,  for  one  ought  to  be 
ab^  to  put  aside  this  absurd  fear,  and  I should  be 
ashamed  if  any  one  knew  that  I was  afraid  of  going 
in  there.” 

In  all  these  cases,  except  the  first,  the  influence  of  the 
social  environment  is  clearly  the  factor  that  leads  to 
the  mastery  of  the  one  impulse  by  the  other.  And  the 
last  two  cases,  which  clearly  imply  the  existence  of 


VOLITION 


251 


the  sentiment  of  self-respect  and  the  co-operation  of 
an  impulse  awakened  within  it,  would  generally  be 
admitted  to  be  cases  of  volition. 

y./Sut  now  consider  a case  in  which,  although  social 
di^pproval  is  ranged  on  the  side  of  the  restraining 
impulse,  the  effort  of  will,  being  thrown  on  the  side  of 
the  motive  for  action,  enables  it  to  overcome  the  restrain- 
ing impulse.  Suppose  that  our  imaginary  agent  is  a 
man  of  great  attainments  whose  life  and  work  are 
publicly  recognised  as  of  great  value  to  the  com- 
munity; and  suppose  that  he  suddenly  finds  himself 
before  a burning  house  in  which  a child  remains  in 
imminent  danger.  To  save  the  child  seems  impossible, 
and,  though  the  man’s  protective  impulse  strongly 
prompts  him  to  make  the  attempt,  he  is  restrained 
by  a very  real  fear.  We  may  suppose  that  the  impulse 
of  fear  is  more  than  strong  enough  to  overcome  the 
rival  impulse,  if  these  two  were  left  to  fight  it  out 
alone ; and  we  may  suppose  that  the  influence  of  his 
friends  and  of  society  in  general  is  thrown  upon  the 
side  of  his  fear — his  companion  tells  him  that  it  would 
be  wicked  to  sacrifice  his  valuable  life  in  this  hopeless 
attempt,  and  he  knows  that  this  will  be  the  general 
opinion  of  his  fellows  and  that  he  will  be  regarded  by 
many  as  a vainglorious  fool.  Nevertheless,  our  hero 
feels  that  to  make  the  attempt  is  the  higher  line  of 
conduct,  he  deliberates  a few  moments  and  then, 
choosing  to  act,  throws  himself  into  the  forlorn  hope 
with  all  his  energy.  Here  is  a case  of  undeniable 
volition,  of  hard  choice,  and  of  action  in  the  line  of 
greatest  resistance.  xThe  appeal  of  social  approval 
and  disapproval  to  the  self-regarding  sentiment  seems 
to  be  all  against  the  decision  actually  taken,  yet  the 
will  seems  to  triumph  over  that  as  well  as  over  the 
restraining  impulse  of  fear. 


252 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


Is  it,  then,  impossible  to  bring  this  case  under 
our  definition  of  volition?  Must  we  fall  back  on  in- 
determinism and  say : Here  was  an  action  that  was 
performed  by  sheer  volition  against  all  the  motives 
arising  from  the  man’s  mental  constitution  ; all  the 
factors  of  which  we  can  give  any  psychological  account 
were  against  action,  yet  the  will  triumphed  over  them  ? 

do  not  think  we  need  draw  this  conclusion ; for  the 
principles  of  explanation  we  have  hitherto  relied  upon 
will  not  fail  us  altogether  in  this  case. 

We  may  imagine 
such  volition  can  be  accounted  for. 

1.  The  man  may  be  moved  to  his  decision  by  the 
belief  that  his  conduct  would  be  approved  by  persons 

highly,  whose  a^roval 
appeals  more  strongly  to  his  self-regarding  sentiment, 
than  the  approval  of  all  his  friends  and  contemporaries. 
He  may  think  of  such  men  as  Chinese  Gordon  and 
others  for  whom  he  may  have  a profound  admiration 
or  reverence ; or  he  may  believe  in  a purely  ideal 
personality;  and,  though  he  may  believe  that  these 
persons  will  never  know  of  his  action,  yet  his  assurance 
that,  if  they  knew,  they  would  approve,  awakens  a 
motive  within  his  self-regarding  sentiment  that  over- 
rides all  others  and  determines  his  hard  choice ; just 
as  on  a lower  plane,  in  the  type  of  volition  illustrated 
by  our  sixth  case,  one  says,  “ I will  overcome  this  fear, 
for  what  would  my  companions  say  if  they  knew  I 
was  afraid.” 

2.  On  the  other  hand,  our  hero  may  decide  from 
principle.  He  may  long  ago  have  decided  after 
reflection  that  courageous  self-sacrifice  for  the  good 
of  others  is  a principle  superior  to  all  other  considera- 
tions. Whether  his  opinion  is  right  may  be  for  others 
a fair  matter  of  dispute,  but  not  for  him  ; he  has  made 


VOLITION 


253 


up  his  mind  after  mature  and  cool  deliberation  ; and 
now  a case  arises  calling  for  the  application  of  his 
principle,  and  he  acts  in  accordance  with  it  and  against 
what  might  seem  overwhelmingly  strong  motives,  /^uch 
action  is  the  type  of  resolution,  of  resolute  adherence 
to  decisions  once  formed  ; and  it  is  the  highest  type  of 
resolute  action,  because  in  this  case  the  decision  was 
not  formed  in  face  of  the  special  circumstances  calling 
for  its  application,  but  was  of  a general  nature. 

/Hoia^ jthen^  do^sjthe  possession  of  this  principle  supply 
the  _rnptive  pew  that„  overcomes  the  other  strong 
motives  ? i he  bare  verbd_  form^  “I  will  always 

prefer  self-sacrifice  to  self-seeking,”  has  no  rnotive 
power,  or  but  a minimum.  In  the  first  place,  this 

preference  for  self-sacrifice  is  a moral  sentiment 
acquired  in  the  ,m^.  by jeLecd ye_absqr^^^^  the 

higher  nioral  tradition  in  the  way  we  noticed  in  the 
preceding  chapter ; and  this  moral  sentiment  has  been 
incorporated  in  the  sentiment  for  the  ideal  of  conduct 
that  our  hero  has  set  up  for  himself. -y. His  self-regarding 
sentiment  demands  that  he  shall  live  up  to  this  ideal ; 
he  feels  shame  when  he  does  not,  elation  and  satisfac- 
tion when  he  does  ;/that  is  to  say,  the  impulse  of  self- 
assertion  organised  within  his  sentiment  of  self-respect 
gives  rise  to  a strong  desire  to  realise  his  ideal  under 
all  circumstances. 

Ij^But,  in  order  that  his  adopted  principle  may  power- 
fully affect  his  conduct,  something  more  is  needed.  He 
must  have  a strong  sentiment  for  self-controL  Of  all  the 
abstract  moral  sentiments,  this  is  the  ma^er  sentiment 
for  volition  and  especially  for  resolution,  //it  is  a special 
development  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment.  For  the 
man  in  whom  this  sentiment  has  become  strong  the 
desire  of  realising  his  ideal  of  self-control  is  a master- 
motive  that  enables  him  to  apply  his  adopted  principles 


254 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


of  action,  the  results  of  his  deliberate  decisions,  in  spite 
of  the  opposition  of  all  other  motives.  The  operation 
lof  this  sentiment,  more  than  anything  else,  gives  a man 
|the  appearance  of  independence  of  the  appeal  of  the 
ivoice  of  society,  and  of  all  other  persons,  to  his  self- 
Iregarding  sentiment.  It  enables  him  to  substitute 
himself,  as  it  were,  for  his  social  environment. 

These  two  interpretations  of  this  particular  case  seem 
to  me  to  illustrate  the  two  principal  types  of  higher 
volition  natural  to  men  of  different  dispositions.  The 
former  case,  in  which  the  determining  motive  is  the 
desire  of  the  approval  of  the  ideal  spectator,  illustrates, 
perhaps,  the  more  usual  source  of  the  moral  volition  of 
the  man  in  whom  active  sympathy  is  strongly  devel- 
oped. In  principle  it  presents  no  difficulty,  if  we  have 
sufficiently  accounted  for  the  influence  of  approval  and 
disapproval  in  general.  It  implies  merely  a greater 
refinement  of  discrimination  between  those  whose 
approval  we  value  or  are  indifferent  to  than  is 
exercised  by  the  average  man. 

The  other  type  is  characteristic  of  the  less  social,  less 
sympathetic,  man.  In  this  case  it  is  less  easy  to  trace 
the  energy  of  volition  back  to  the  self-regarding  senti- 
ment. For  we  found  that  this  sentiment  has  for  its 
object,  not  the  self  merely,  but  the  self  in  its  relations 
to  others,  the  emotional  and  conative  dispositions  of  the 
sentiment  being  excited  by  the  regards  and  attitudes  of 
others  towards  the  self.  And  it  is  now  suggested  that 
a man  may  achieve  a hard  moral  choice  in  opposition 
to  social  approval  or  disapproval  by  substituting  him- 
self, more  or  less  completely,  for  his  fellow-men  as  the 
spectator  whose  regards  evoke  the  impulses  of  his  self- 
regarding  sentiment  and  in  whose  approval  they  find 
their  satisfaction.  It  is  doubtful  whether  this  substitu- 
tion is  ever  completely  achieved  ; for,  as  we  have  seen, 


VOLITION 


255 


the  idea  of  the  self,  the  consciousness  of  self,  is  in  its 
very  origin  and  essential  nature  a consciousness  of  the 
self  in  its  social  relations  ; and  probably  some  vague 
social  reference  always  persists.  But,  in  any  case,  it  is 
clear,  I think,  that  this  kind  of  volition,  which  seems 
almost  to  render  a man  independent  of  his  social 
environment,  can  only  be  attained  to  by  the  develop- 
ment of  the  self-regarding  sentiment  under  social  in- 
fluences. Most  of  us  make  some  progress  towards 
this  substitution.  At  first  our  self-regarding  sentiment 
is  sensitive  to  the  regards  of  every  one  and  of  all  social 
circles ; and  then,  as  we  find  that  different  persons  and 
circles  regard  the  same  conduct  and  our  same  self  very 
differently,  we  learn  to  set  these  off  against  one  another 
more  or  less,  we  learn  to  despise  the  opinions  and  regards 
of  the  mass  of  men  and  to  gain  confidence  in  our 
own  personal  and  moral  judgments  ; thus  our  own 
estimate  of  ourselves,  which  in  early  life  is  apt  to 
fluctuate  with  every  passing  regard  of  our  fellows, 
becomes  stable  and  relatively  independent. 

/ Most  of  us,  perhaps,  may  be  said  to  achieve  a stage 
in  this  process  at  which  our  self-regarding  sentiment 
and  emotions  have  for  their  object  the  self  in  relation 
to  the  select  group  of  persons  who  are  of  similar  ways 
of  thinking  with  ourselves,  those  who  share  our  moral 
sentiments  and  from  whom  we  have  in  the  main 
absorbed  them ; and,  when  we  make  a moral  effort, 
it  is  with  some  more  or  less  vague  reference  to  this 
select  circle.  All  this  applies  to  the  self,  not  only  in 
its  strictly  moral  aspects,  but  in  all  others  also ; and 
one  of  the  great  advantages  of  being  fully  grown  up  is 
that  we  cease  to  suffer  so  acutely  and  so  frequently  the 
elations  and  the  humiliations  which  in  early  life  we  are  so 
liable  to  experience  in  face  of  every  attitude  of  approval 
or  disapproval,  whether  expressed  or  merely  implied. 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


256 

/ There  are  two  doctrines  from  which  we  must  care- 
fully distinguish  this  of  the  self-approbative  impulse  : 

1.  There  is  Adam  Smithes  fiction  of  the  well- 
informed  and  impartial  spectator,  the  man  within  the 
breast,  whose  approval  we  seek  ; this  may  be  regarded 
as  a first  approximation  to  the  truth. 

2.  There  is  the  hedonistic  doctrine,  which  we  rejected 
in  an  earlier  chapter,  to  the  effect  that  in  making 
a moral  effort  we  are  always  seeking  the  pleasure  of 
self-satisfaction  or  seeking  to  avoid  the  pain  of  remorse. 
The  kind  of  volition  we  are  considering  may,  and,  I 
think,  usually  does,  involve  no  anticipation  of  these 
pleasures  and  pains.  The  pleasure  or  pain  may  result, 
but  the  desire  of,  or  aversion  from,  it  is  not  necessarily 
or  commonly  an  important  part  of  the  motive  ;/whs.t  we 
jdesire,  or  are  averse  from,  is  not  the  pleasure  of  approval 
or  the  pain  of  disapproval,  but  the  approval  or  dis- 
approval themselves ; and,  whether  the  approval  is 
our  own  or  another’s,  the  source  of  the  additional 
motive  power,  which  in  the  moral  effort  of  volition  is 
thrown  upon  the  side  of  the  weaker,  more  ideal  impulse, 
is  ultimately  to  be  found  in  that  instinct  of  self  display 
or  self  assertion  whose  affective  aspect  is  the  emotion 

jof  positive  self-feeling.  That  this  is  true  we  may  see 
clearly  in  such  a simple  case  of  volition  as  that  of  a 
boy  overcoming  by  effort  of  the  will,  owing  to  the 
presence  of  spectators,  an  impulse  of  fear  that  restrains 
him  from  some  desired  object.  He  makes  his  effort 
and  overcomes  his  fear-impulse,  because,  as  we  say,  he 
knows  his  companions  are  looking  at  him  ; the  impulse 
of  self-display  is  evoked  on  the  side  of  the  weaker 
motive.  And  the  same  is  true  of  those  more  refined 
efforts  of  the  will  in  which  the  operation  of  this  impulse 
is  so  deeply  obscured  that  it  has  not  hitherto  been 
recognised. 


VOLITION 


257 


Moral  advance  and  the  development  of  volition 
consist,  then,  not  in  the  coming  into  play  of  factors 
of  a new  order,  whether  called  the  will  or  the  moral 
instinct  or  conscience,  but  in  the  development  of  the 
self-regarding  sentiment  and  in  the  improvement  or 
refinement  of  the  “ gallery  ” before  which  we  display 
ourselves,  the  social  circle  that  is  capable  of  evoking 
in  us  this  impulse  of  self-display;  and  this  refinement 
may  be  continued  until  the  “gallery”  becomes  an  ideal 
spectator  or  group  of  spectators  or,  in  the  last  resort, 
one’s  own  critical  self  standing  as  the  representative 
of  such  spectators. 

^ To  this  statement  the  objection  may  be  raised  that 
it  seems  to  make  what  we  commonly  call  a prig  of 
every  man  who  makes  any  moral  effort.  It  may  be 
said  that  the  ordinarily  good  man  simply  does  what 
seems  to  be  right  as  judged  by  its  social  effects, 
regardless  of  the  figure  he  cuts  in  his  own  or  others’ 
eyes  ; that  that  is  the  only  truly  moral  conduct ; and 
that  to  care  about,  and  to  be  moved  by  the  thought 
of,  the  figure  one  will  cut  is  the  mark  of  a prig.  But 
any  one  who  raises  this  objection  and  maintains  that 
the  outward-looking  attitude  is  the  only  truly  moral 
one,  proves  the  truth  of  the  position  maintained  above 
by  his  resentment  and  by  his  implied  admission  that 
the  attitude  of  the  agent  is  of  so  much  importance  for 
the  estimation  of  the  moral  worth  of  conduct ; for 
he  shows  that  he  desires  that  he  himself  and  other 
good  men  should  be  regarded  as  acting  in  the  outward- 
looking attitude  and  not  in  that  inward-looking  one 
which  he  characterises  as  priggish.  /There  are  two 
important  differences  between  the  truly  moral  man  and 
the  prig.  The  prig  finds  in  the  desire  for  an  admirable 
and  praiseworthy  attitude  his  only,  or  at  least  his 
predominant,  motive  to  right  doing ; whereas  the 
s 


2SS 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


moral  agent  desires  the  right  for  its  own  sake  in  virtue 
of  his  moral  sentiments,  and  habitually  acts  from  this 
motive ; and  it  is  only  when  a moral  conflict  arises 
with  the  necessity  for  moral  choice  and  effort,  that 
the  self  and  the  self-regarding  impulse  play  the  decisive 
role.  Again,  the  truly  moral  man  has  an  ideal  of 
conduct  so  high  that  he  can  hardly  attain  to  it,  and, 
realising  this,  he  is  moved  by  the  desire  not  to  fall 
short  of  it  and  not  to  incur  the  disapproval  of  his 
ideal  spectators  ; whereas  the  prig^s  ideal  is  so  easily 
within  his  reach  that  he  constantly  attains  it  and 
achieves  the  pleasure  of  self-approval — “ he  puts  in  his 
thumb  and  pulls  out  a plum,  and  says — What  a good 
boy  am  I.” 

(JJ  Our  study  of  volition  is  not  complete  without  some 
consideration  of  the  relation  of  will  to  what  is  called 
character.  Character  has  been  defined  as  ‘‘that  from 
which  the  will  proceeds  ” ; and  will  might  equally  well 
be  defined  as  “that  which  proceeds  from  character.” 
What,  then,  is  character  ? At  the  outset  we  said  that 
character  is  something  built  up  in  the  course  of  life, 
and  that  it  must  therefore  be  distinguished  from  dis- 
position and  from  temperament,  which  are  in  the 
main  natively  given.  ^There  can  be  no  doubt,  I think, 
that  the  sentiments  constitute  a large  part  of  what 
is  properly  called  character.  But  do  they  constitute 
the  whole  of  character?  Or  is  there  some  other 
acquired  feature  of  the  adult  mental  constitution  that 

’ acter  in  the  strict  sense 


some  such  additional  feature  involved  in  character, 
seems  to  be  proved  by  the  existence  of  persons  who 
have  many  strong  sentiments  and  who  yet  cannot  be 
said  to  have  strong  character.  They  are  the  senti- 
mentalists. 


beside  the  sentiments. 


VOLITION 


259 


^yVne  essential  condition  of  strong  character  seems 
to  be  the  organisation  of  the  sentiments  in  some 
harmonious  system  or  hierarchy.  The  most  usual 
or  readiest  way  in  which  such  systematisation  of  the 
sentiments  can  be  brought  about,  is  the  predominance 
of  some  one  sentiment  that  in  all  circumstances  is 
capable  of  supplying  a dominant  motive,  that  directs 
all  conduct  towards  the  realisation  of  one  end  to 
which  all  other  ends  are  subordinated.  The  dominant 
sentiment  may  be  a concrete  or  an  abstract  sentiment; 
it  may  be  the  love  of  money,  of  home,  of  country,  of 
justice,  -^hen  any  such  sentiment  acquires  decided 
predominance  over  all  others,  we  call  it  a ruling 
passion ; whenever  other  motives  conflict  with  the 
motives  arising  within  the  system  of  a ruling  passion, 
they  go  to  the  wall,  they  are  powerless  to  oppose  it. 

Take  the  case  of  a man  whose  ruling  passion  is  the 
love  of  home,  say  of  a beautiful  ancestral  home  that 
is  dilapidated  and  encumbered  with  debts  when  it 
first  becomes  his  own.  He  sets  out  to  restore  its 
ancient  glories,  perhaps  entering  upon  the  task  with 
reluctance.  As  time  goes  on  his  sentiment  gains 
strength,  he  acquires  the  habit  of  working  for  this 
one  end,  of  valuing  all  things  according  to  the  degree 
in  which  they  contribute  towards  it.  All  other  motives 
become  not  only  relatively,  but  absolutely,  weaker 
for  lack  of  exercise ; that  is  to  say,  they  are  never 
allowed  to  determine  action  and  so  tend  to  atrophy 
from  disuse.  The  man  loses  his  other  sentiments,  or 
interests,  as  we  say ; he  gives  up  sport,  art,  horses,  and 
what  not,  and  may  become  indifferent  to  the  opinions 
of  his  fellow-men,  may  be  content  to  appear  miserly 
and  to  commit  mean  actio'^s  in  the  service  of  his  ruling 
passion. 

Can  such  a man  be  said  to  have  acquired  a strong 


26o 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


character?  In  contrast  with  the  man  whose  sentiments 
are  but  little  systematised,  he  may  seem  to  have  strong 
character.  This  other  man  will  be  drawn  this  way  and 
that.  If  he  is  of  sympathetic  nature,  he  will  be  liable 
to  be  dominated  first  by  one,  then  by  another,  senti- 
ment, according  to  the  nature  of  the  social  influences 
that  bear  upon  him,  the  opinions  and  sentiments  of 
each  social  circle  he  enters.  He  will  make  no  sustained 
effort  in  any  direction,  except  under  the  spur  of 
necessity.  And  the  man  of  specifically  weak  character, 
or  lacking  in  character,  is  the  man  whose  sentiments 
not  only  have  not  been  organised  in  any  system, 
but  have  not  been  consolidated  and  confirmed  by 
habitual  action  in  accordance  with  their  prompting, 
because  the  man  has  constantly  allowed  himself  to  be 
moved  by  the  entirely  unorganised  and  fleeting  im- 
pulses evoked  sporadically  by  each  situation  as  it 
arises,  "llabitual  action  on  the  motiv^es  supplied  by 
the  systematised  sentiments  is,  then,  an  essential 
factor  in  character,  over  and  above  the  possession  of 
the  sentiments. 

^Does,  then,  the  possession  of  a master-sentiment  or 
ruling  passion  of  any  kind,  such  as  the  passion  for  a 
home  that  we  considered  just  now,  or  one  for  money  or 
for  any  other  concrete  or  abstract  object,  in  itself  con- 
stitute character,  when  confirmed,  as  a ruling  passion 
always  is,  by  habitual  action  from  the  motives  it 
supplies  ? It  does  not  constitute  strong  character  in 
the  full  sense  of  the  words.  It  seems  to  give  the  man 
a strong  will  in  relation  to  all  that  affects  the  object  of 
his  master-sentiment ; but  he  has  not  strong  will  and 
character  in  the  full  sense,  but  rather  what  might  be 
called  specialised  character.  relation  to  all  objects 
and'situations  that  are  not  in  any  way  connected  with 
his  ruling  passion,  or  if  the  object  of  it  is  irrevocably 


VOLITION 


261 

taken  from  him,  such  a man  may  display  deplorable 
weakness  or  lack  of  will  and  character.  In  fact,  he 
cannot  properly  be  said  to  have  a strong  will  or  to 
exert  volition  ; his  ruling  passion  supplies  him  with 
motives  so  strong  that,  in  all  situations  in  which  its 
object  is  concerned,  conflict  of  motives  and  deliberation 
can  hardly  occur  and  volition  is  not  needed  ; while  in 
all  other  situations  he  is  incapable  of  volition. 

here  is  only  one  sentiment  which  by  becoming 
the  master-sentiment  can  generate  strong  character  in 
the  fullest  sense,  and  that  is  the  s^-reg;a^ding  SQnti- 
mjent.  There  is  a lower  imperfect  form  of  the  sentiment, 
ambition  or  the  love  of  fame,  the  ambition  to  become 
publicly  recognised  as  a man  of  this  or  that  kind  of 
ability  or  power.  When  this  sentiment  becomes  a 
ruling  passion  it  may  cover  almost  the  whole  of 
conduct,  may  supply  a dominant  motive  for  almost 
every  situation,  a motive  v/hich  arising  within  the  self- 
regarding  sentiment  determines  volition  in  the  strict 
sense  in  which  we  have  defined  it.  But  it  is  not 
properly  a moral  sentiment,  and,  though  it  may  gene- 
rate character,  the  character  formed  through  its  agency 
is  not  moral  character. 

For  the  generation  of  moral  character  in  the  fullest 
sense,  the  strong  self-regarding  sentiment  must  be 
combined  with  one  for  some  ideal  of  conduct,  and  it 
must  have  risen  above  dependence  on  the  regards  of 
the  mass  of  men  ; and  the  motives  supplied  by  this 
master-sentiment  in  the  service  of  the  ideal  must  attain 
an  habitual  predominance.  There  are  men,  so  well 
described  by  Professor  James,  who  have  the  sentiment 
and  the  ideal  of  the  right  kind,  but  in  whom,  neverthe- 
less, the  fleeting,  unorganised  desires  repeatedly  prove 
too  strong  for  the  will  to  overcome  them.  They  lack 
the  second  essential  factor  in  character,  the  habit  of 


262 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


self-control,  the  habitual  dominance  of  the  self- 
regarding  sentiment  ; perhaps  because  the  native 
disposition  that  is  the  main  root  of  self-respect  is 
innately  lacking  in  strength ; perhaps  because  they 
have  never  learnt  to  recognise  the  awful  power  of  habit, 
and  have  been  content  to  say,  This  time  I will  not 
trouble  to  resist  this  desire,  to  suppress  this  impulse ; 
I know  that  I can  do  so  if  I really  exert  my  will.” 
Every  time  this  happens,  the  power  of  volition  is 
weakened  relatively  to  that  of  the  unorganised  desires  ; 
^very  time  the  self-regarding  sentiment  masters  an 
impulse  of  some  other  source,  it  is  rendered,  according 
to  the  law  of  habit,  more  competent  to  do  so  again — the 
will  is  strengthened  as  we  say.  And,  when  the  habitual 
dominance  of  this  master-sentiment  has  been  estab- 
lished, perhaps  after  many  conflicts,  it  becomes  capable 
of  determining  the  issue  of  every  conflict  so  certainly 
and  easily  that  conflicts  can  hardly  arise ; it  supplies  a 
determining  motive  for  every  possible  situation,  namely, 
the  desire  that  I,  the  self,  shall  do  the  right.  So  this 
motive,  in  the  individual  for  whom  it  has  repeatedly 
won  the  day  in  all  conflicts  of  motives,  acquires  the 
irresistible  strength  of  a fixed  consolidated  habit ; and, 
in  accordance  with  the  law  of  habit,  as  it  becomes  more 
and  more  fixed  and  invariable,  it  operates  more  and 
more  automatically,  with  diminishing  intensity  of 
its  conscious  aspect,  with  less  intensity  of  the  emotion 
and  desire  from  which  the  habit  was  generated,  and 
with  less  explicit  reference  to  the  persons  in  whose 
eyes  the  self  seeks  approval. 

V In  this  way  the  self  comes  to  rule  supreme  over 
/conduct,  the  individual  is  raised  above  moral  conflict; 
)he  attains  character  in  the  fullest  sense  and  a completely 
\ generalised  will,  and  exhibits  to  the  world  that  finest 
^flower  of  moral  growth,  serenity.  His  struggles  are 


VOLITION 


263 


no  longer  moral  conflicts,  but  are  intellectual  efforts 
to  discover  what  is  most  worth  doing,  what  is  most 
right  for  him  to  do. 

r It  is  important  to  note,  especially  in  view  of  the 
analogy  to  be  drawn  between  the  individual  will  and 
the  national,  or  other  form  of  collective  or  general, 
will,  thsit/the  development  of  self-consciousness  and  of 
the  self-regarding  sentiment  renders  the  behaviour  of 
the  individual  progressively  less  dependent  upon  his 
environment ; that  it  involves  a continuous  advance 
from  action  of  the  type  of  immediate  response  to 
the  impressions  made  on  the  sense-organs  and  an 
approximation  towards  complete  self-determination, 
towards  conduct  that  is  the  issue  of  conditions  wholly 
comprised  within  the  constitution  of  the  mind.  Like 
the  evolution  of  mind  in  the  race,  this  advance  involves 
also  a progress  from  predominantly  mechanical  to  pre- 
dominantly teleological  determination,  a continuous 
increase  of  the  part  played  by  final  causes  relatively 
to  that  of  purely  mechanical  causes  in  the  determination 
of  the  behaviour  of  the  individual.  No  doubt  the  vague 
movements  of  the  infant  are  teleological  or  purposive 
in  the  lowliest  sense  of  the  word  ; but  actions  do  not 
become  the  expressions  of  conscious  purpose  until  the 
individual  attains  the  capacity  of  representing  the  end 
towards  which  he  feels  himself  impelled.  At  the  inter- 
mediate level  of  development  of  the  personality,  the 
ends  or  final  causes  of  his  action  are  immediate,  various, 
and  often  inharmonious  with  one  another;  with  the 
development  of  a unified  personality,  of  clear  self- 
consciousness,  a consistent  ideal  of  conduct  and  a strong 
sentiment  for  the  self  and  for  that  ideal),  these  are  more 
and  more  superseded  and  controlled  by  a single  all- 
powerful  final  cause,  the  ideal  of  the  self. 

The  foregoing  account  of  volition  differs  from  those 


264 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


of  other  writers  in  the  stress  laid  upon  the  systematic 
organisation  of  the  conative  dispositions  in  the  moral 
and  self-regarding  sentiments ; and  its  principal  claim 
to  originality  is  the  attempt  made  to  exhibit  the  con- 
tinuity of  the  development  of  the  highest  types  of 
human  will  and  character  from  the  primary  instinctive 
dispositions  that  we  have  in  common  with  the  animals. 
Especial  importance,  as  an  essential  factor  in  volition, 
has  been  attached  to  the  impulse  of  self-assertion  or 
self-display  and  its  concomitant  emotion  of  positive 
self-feeling.  It  may  seem  paradoxical  and  repugnant 
to  our  sense  of  the  nobility  of  moral  conduct,  that  it 
should  be  exhibited  as  dependent  on  an  impulse  that 
we  share  with  the  animals  and  which  in  them  plays 
a part  that  is  of  secondary  importance  and  utterly 
amoral.  should,  however,  be  remembered  that  the 
j humble  nature  of  the  remote  origins  of  any  thing  we 
justly  admire  or  revere  in  nowise  detracts  from  its 
intrinsic  worth  or  dignity,  and  that  the  ascertainment 
of  those  origins  need  not,  and  should  not,  diminish  by 
one  jot  our  admiration  or  reverence. 


SECTION  II 


THE  OPERATION  OF  THE  PRIMARY  TEN- 
DENCIES OF  THE  HUMAN  MIND  IN 


THE  REPRODUCTIVE  AND  THE  PARENTAL 
INSTINCTS 

IN  the  first  section  of  this  book  certain  primary  or 
fundamental  tendencies  of  the  human  mind  were 
distinguished  and  described,  and  it  was  asserted  that 
these  are  the  prime  movers,  the  great  motive  powers,  of 
human  life  and  society,  and  that  therefore  a true  under- 
standing of  the  nature  and  operation  of  these  tendencies 
S must  form  the  essential  basis  of  all  social  psychology, 
and  in  fact  of  the  social  sciences  in  general.  I propose 
to  devote  this  section  to  the  illustration  of  the  truth  of 
this  position,  and  to  consider  very  briefly  some  of  the 
principal  ways  in  which  each  of  these  primary  tenden- 
cies plays  its  part  in  shaping  the  social  life  of  man  and 
in  determining  the  forms  of  institutions  and  of  social 
organisation. 

The  processes  to  be  dealt  with  are  so  complex,  the 
operations  of  the  different  factors  are  so  intricately 
combined,  their  effects  are  so  variously  interwoven  and 


THE  LIFE  OF  SOCIETIES  "V-s 


CHAPTER  X \ 


266 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


fused  in  the  forms  of  social  organisations  and  institutions, 
that  it  would  be  presumptuous  to  attempt  to  prove  the 
truth  of  most  of  the  views  advanced.  I would  therefore 
repeat  and  especially  emphasise  in  regard  to  this  section 
the  remark  made  in  the  introduction  to  this  volume  to 
the  effect  that,  in  spite  of  the  dogmatic  form  adopted 
for  the  sake  of  brevity  and  clearness  of  exposition,  my 
aim  is  to  be  suggestive  rather  than  dogmatic,  to  stimu- 
late thought  and  promote  discussion  rather  than  to  lay 
dawn  conclusions  for  the  acceptance  of  the  reader. 
'^The  reproductive  instinct  is  in  a sense  antisocial 
rather  than  social.  Nevertheless  its  importance  for 
society  needs  no  demonstration  ; for  it  is  clear  that,  if  it 
could  be  abolished  in  any  people,  that  people  would 
very  soon  disappear  from  the  face  of  the  earth.  In  all 
animal  species  the  strength  of  this  instinct  is  maintained 
at  a very  high  level  by  natural  selection  ; for  the  pro- 
duction by  each  generation  of  offspring  more  numerous 
than  themselves — in  some  cases  many  thousand  times 
more  numerous — has  been  an  essential  condition  of  the 
survival  of  the  species,  of  the  better  adaptation  of 
species  to  their  environment,  and  of  the  evolution  of 
new  species.  In  the  human  species  also  it  is  one 
of  the  strongest  of  the  instincts ; so  strong  is  it  that 
the  control  and  regulation  of  its  impulse  is  one  of 
the  most  difficult  problems  for  the  individual  and  for 
society.  In  every  age  and  country  its  operation  is 
to  some  extent  regulated  by  rigid  social  customs,  or 
by  laws,  which  are  commonly  enforced  by  the  severest 
penalties. 

In  many  animal  species  the  reproductive  instinct 
secures  the  perpetuation  of  the  species  without  the  co- 
operation of  any  parental  instinct,  whilst  some  animals, 
e.g,,  the  working  bee,  have  a parental  but  no  reproduc- 
tive instinct ; but  all  human  beings,  with  rare  excep- 


THE  FAMILY  INSTINCTS 


267 

tions,  possess  both  these  instincts  /and  there  is  probably 
some  degree  of  correlation  between  the  strengths  of  the 
two  instincts,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  individuals  in  whom 
one  of  them  is  strong  the  other  will  also  be  strong  in 
the  majority  of  cases,  and  vice  versd.  The  social  opera- 
tions and  effects  of  these  two  instincts  are  in  certain 
respects  so  intimately  interwoven  and  blended  that 
they  cannot  be  clearly  distinguished.  This  intimate 
association  of  the  two  instincts,  which  is  undoubtedly 
of  great  social  advantage,  makes  it  necessary  to 
discuss  them  conjointly. 

The  work  of  Malthus  on  “ Population  ” was  the 
first  to  attract  general  attention  to  the  social  opera- 
tion of  these  instincts.  Malthus  pointed  out  that, 
if  these  instincts  were  given  free  play  in  any  society 
of  fairly  secure  organisation,  the  rate  of  increase  of 
the  population  would  be  exceedingly  rapid,  and  that 
the  actual  rate  of  increase  in  all  civilised  societies, 
being  much  lower  than  the  maximal  rate,  implies 
that  the  instincts  are  commonly  controlled  in  some 
degree.  The  population  of  most  European  countries 
has  increased  during  the  historic  period  at  a very 
slow  rate,  except  during  part  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
when  the  invention  of  so  many  forms  of  machinery 
almost  suddenly  multiplied  man's  power  of  producing 
the  necessaries  of  life.  That  of  some  European 
countries  has  passed  through  periods  of  great  dimi- 
nution ; thus  it  is  estimated  that  Spain  enjoyed 
towards  the  close  of  the  Roman  occupation  a popu- 
lation of  twenty  millions,  and  that  this  sank  as  low 
as  six  millions  in  the  eighteenth  century.^  Even 
when  we  remember  the  ravages  made  by  plague, 
famine,  and  war,  and  the  large  number  of  persons  that 
throughout  the  Middle  Ages  was  condemned  to  celibacy 
* See  Buckle's  “ History  of  Civilisation  in  Europe." 


268 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


through  the  influence  of  the  Church,  this  slow  rate  of 
increase,  or  actual  decrease,  of  population  remains 
something  of  a mystery.^  But  it  is  clear  that  in  the 
present  age  prudent  control  of  these  instincts  plays  a 
great  part  in  keeping  down  the  birth-rate.  The 
population  of  France  is  almost  (or,  but  for  immigra- 
tion, quite)  stationary,  and  it  is  notorious  that  this  is 
due  very  largely  to  prudent  control.  And  statistics, 
showing  that  the  numbers  of  marriages  and  births  in 
various  countries  vary  with  the  cost  of  the  prime 
necessaries  of  life  and  with  the  prosperity  of  trade  and 
agriculture,  prove  that  such  control  plays  its  part  in 
most  of  the  civilised  countries. 

The  parental  instinct  is  the  foundation  of  the  family, 
and,  with  few  exceptions,  all  who  have  given  serious 
attention  to  the  question  are  agreed  that  the  stability  of 
the  family  is  the  prime  condition  of  a healthy  state 
of  society  and  of  the  stability  of  every  community.® 
Although  a contrary  opinion  has  been  maintained  by 
certain  wndters,  it  is  in  the  highest  degree  probable  that 
the  family  was  the  earliest  form  of  human  society.3 
We  have  no  certain  record  of  any  tribe  or  community  of 
human  beings  in  which  the  family  in  one  form  or 
another  does  not  exist.  It  is  reduced  perhaps  to  its 
lowest  terms  among  some  of  the  negrito  peoples,  where 
the  co-operation  of  the  father  with  the  mother  in  the 
care  of  the  offspring — which  is  the  essential  feature 

* Professor  Pollard  attributes  it  in  part  to  voluntary  control 
induced  by  the  system  of  land  tenure,  as  in  modern  France. 
‘^Factors  in  Modern  History,”  p.  135. 

® For  an  excellent  discussion  of  the  importance  of  the  family 
see  Mrs.  Bosanquet’s  ^‘The  Family,”  and  the  works  of  the  school 
of  Le  Play,  especially^'  La  Constitution  Essentielle  de  THumanite.” 

3 Professor  Keane  asserts  this  to  be  the  issue  of  the  lively 
discussion  that  has  been  waged  on  this  topic.  See  his  " Eth- 
nology.” 


THE  FAMILY  INSTINCTS  269 

of  the  family — continues  only  until  the  child  is  weaned 
and  can  walk.^ 

It  is  probable  that  these  two  instincts  in  conjunction, 
the  reproductive  and  the  parental  instincts,  directly 
impel  human  beings  to  a greater  sum  of  activity, 
effort,  and  toil,  than  all  the  other  motives  of  human 
action  taken  together. 

The  parental  instinct  especially  impels  to  actions  that 
involve  self-sacrifice,  in  the  forms  of  suppression  of  the 
narrower  egoistic  tendencies  and  of  heavy  and  unremit- 
ting toil  on  behalf  of  the  offspring.  Since  these 
sacrifices  and  exertions  on  behalf  of  the  children  are 
a necessary  condition  of  the  continued  existence  and 
the  flourishing  of  any  society,  whether  small  or  large, 
we  find  that  among  all  peoples,  save  the  very  lowest  in 
the  scale  of  culture,  the  institution  of  marriage  and  the 
duties  of  parenthood  are  surrounded  by  the  most  solemn 
social  sanctions,  which  are  embodied  in  traditional  public 
opinion  and  in  custom,  in  formal  laws,  and  in  the  rites 
and  doctrines  of  religion.  These  sanctions  are  in  the 
main  the  more  solemnly  and  rigidly  maintained  by  any 
society,  the  higher  the  degree  of  civilisation  attained  by 
it  and  the  freer  and  more  nearly  universal  the  play  of 
the  intellectual  faculties  among  the  members  of  that 
society.  This  correlation  is  accounted  for  by  the 
following  considerations.  The  use  of  reason  and  intel- 
ligent foresight  modifies  profoundly  the  operation 
of  all  the  instincts,  and  is  especially  apt  to  modify  and 
work  against  the  play  of  the  reproductive  and  parental 

* It  is,  I think,  true  without  exception  that  the  family  is  found 
in  every  animal  species,  of  which  the  males,  as  well  as  the 
females,  are  endowed  with  the  parental  instinct  and  co-operate 
in  the  care  of  the  young ; that  is  to  say,  the  co-existence  of  the 
reproductive  and  parental  instincts  in  the  members  of  both 
sexes  suffices  to  determine  the  family,  the  parental  impulse  being 
commonly  directed  to  the  adult  partner,  as  well  as  to  the  offspring. 


270 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


instincts.  Among  the  higher  animals  these  instincts 
suffice  to  secure  the  perpetuation  of  the  species  by  their 
blind  workings.  And  we  may  suppose  that  the  same 
was  true  of  primitive  human  societies.^  But,  with  the 
increase  of  the  power  and  of  the  habit  of  regulating 
instinctive  action  by  intelligent  foresight,  the  egoistic 
impulses  must  have  tended  to  suppress  the  working  of 
the  parental  instinct ; hence  the  need  for  the  support  of 
the  instinct  by  strong  social  sanctions ; hence  also  the 
almost  universal  distribution  of  such  sanctions.  For  those 
societies  in  which  no  such  sanctions  became  organised 
must  have  died  out ; while  only  those  in  which,  as 
intelligence  became  more  powerful,  these  sanctions 
became  more  formidable  have  in  the  long-run  survived 
and  reached  any  considerable  level  of  civilisation. 
There  has  been,  we  may  say,  a never-ceasing  race 
between  the  development  of  individual  intelligence  and 
the  increasing  power  of  these  social  sanctions  ; and 
wdierever  the  former  has  got  ahead  of  the  latter,  there 
social  disaster  and  destruction  have  ensued. 

At  the  present  time  many  savage  tribes  and  barbarous 
communities  are  illustrating  these  principles  ; they  are 
rapidly  dying  out,  owing  to  the  failure  of  the  social 
sanctions  to  give  sufficient  support  to  the  parental 
instinct  against  developing  intelligence.  It  is  largely 
for  this  reason  that  contact  with  civilisation  proves  so 
fatal  to  so  many  savage  peoples ; for  such  contact 
stimulates  their  intelligence,  while  it  breaks  the  power 
of  their  customs  and  social  sanctions  generally  and 
fails  to  replace  them  by  any  equally  efficient.*  A 

* It  has  been  asserted  by  Messrs.  Spencer  and  Gillen  (‘^The 
Northern  Tribes  of  Central  Australia”)  that  some  of  the  Australian 
tribes  are  utterly  ignorant  of  the  relation  of  the  reproductive  act 
to  child-birth,  but  doubt  has  been  thrown  on  this  statement. 

* The  well-meant  efforts  of  missionaries  may  sometimes  play  a 
considerable  part  in  this  process  ; e,g,y  it  has  been  observed  that 


THE  FAMILY  LNSTINCTS 


271 


weakening  of  the  social  sanctions  of  the  parental  and 
reproductive  instincts  by  developing  intelligence  has 
played  a great  part  also  in  the  destruction  of  some  of 
the  most  brilliant  and  powerful  societies  of  the  past, 
notably  those  of  ancient  Greece  and  Rome.^ 

Among  peoples  of  the  lower  cultures  the  failure  of 
the  social  sanctions  to  maintain  the  predominance  of 
the  reproductive  and  parental  instincts  over  the  egoistic 
tendencies  supported  by  intelligence,  shows  itself  mainly 
in  the  form  of  infanticide;  in  the  highly  civilised  nations 
it  takes  the  forms  of  pre-natal  infanticide,  of  great  irregu- 
larity of  the  relations  between  the  sexes,  of  failure  of 
respect  for  marriage,  of  aberrations  of  the  reproductive 
instinct  (which  so  readily  arise  wherever  the  social 
sanctions  become  weakened),  and,  lastly,  of  voluntary 
celibacy  and  restriction  of  the  family .2 

Mr.  Benjamin  Kidd  3 has  argued  that  the  prime  social 
function  of  any  system  of  supernatural  or  religious 
sanctions  is  the  regulation  and  the  S'tipport  of  the 
parental  instinct  against  the  effects  of  developing 
the  abolition  of  polygamy,  in  communities  in  which  females  are 
more  numerous  than  the  males,  has  led  to  such  gross  irregularities 
in  the  sexual  relations  as  to  diminish  greatly  the  rate  of 
reproduction. 

* See  the  frequent  references  to  the  prevalence  of  voluntary 
childlessness  in  Professor  Dill’s  two  volumes,  Roman  Society  in 
the  Last  Century  of  the  Empire,”  and  Roman  Society  from 
Nero  to  Marcus  Aurelius,”  also  M.  de  Lapouge’s  “ Les  Selections 
Socialcs,”  in  which  the  share  of  these  influences  in  the  destruc- 
tion of  Ancient  Greece  is  discussed  in  some  detail.  Dr.  W, 
Schallmayer  argues  to  similar  effect  of  the  decline  of  both  Greece 
and  Rome  Vererbung  u.  Auslese  im  Lebenslauf  d.  Volker”). 

* One  of  the  most  remarkable  illustrations  of  the  tendencies 
discussed  in  this  paragraph  was  afforded  by  the  flourishing 
among  the  natives  of  the  Sandwich  Islands  of  an  association,  the 
members  of  which  bound  themselves  on  frankly  hedonistic 
grounds  to  avoid  parenthood. 

* Social  Evolution.” 


272 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


intelligence.  This  statement  contains  a large  element 
of  truth,  though  it  is  perhaps  an  overstatement  of  the 
case.  However  that  may  be,  it  is  clear  that  one  of  the 
most  momentous  problems  facing  the  most  highly 
civilised  peoples  of  the  present  time  is  whether  they 
will  be  able  to  maintain  their  places  against  their  rivals 
in  the  international  struggle,  in  spite  of  the  secularisa- 
tion of  social  sanctions  and  of  the  institution  of  marriage, 
and  in  spite  of  the  rapid  spread  of  the  habit  of  indepen- 
dent thought  and  action  among  the  people.  For  all 
these  are  influences  that  weaken  those  social  supports 
of  the  parental  instinct  which  seem  to  have  been 
necessary  for  the  continued  welfare  of  the  societies  of 
every  age. 

Up  to  this  point  of  our  discussion  we  have  assumed 
that  the  strength  of  these  two  instincts  remains  un- 
changed from  generation  to  generation,  and  that  any 
changes  of  their  operation  in  societies  are  due  to 
changes  of  customs  and  social  sanctions.  But  this 
assumption  may  be  questioned.  It  may  be  that  the 
instincts  themselves  are  growing  weaker.  And  this  is 
the  assumption  commonly  made  by  writers  in  the 
new^spapers  who  call  attention  from  time  to  time  to  the 
fall  of  the  birth-rate,  which  has  continued  at  an  increas- 
ing rate  in  nearly  all  civilised  countries  during  the  last 
thirty  or  forty  years.  They  commonly  attribute  it  to  a 
decay  or  progressive  weakening  of  the  maternal  instinct, 
under  some  mysterious  influence  of  civilisation.  But 
there  is  no  good  evidence  that  any  such  decay  is 
occurring ; while,  on  the  other  hand,  a number  of  con- 
siderations justify  us  in  asserting  with  some  confidence 
that/The  fall  of  the  birth-rate,  which  seems  inevitably  to 
accompany  the  attainment  of  a high  level  of  civilisation, 
is  not  due  to  any  such  decay  of  the  parental  instinct, 
but  rather  is  to  be  attributed  to  social  changes  of  the 


THE  FAMILY  INSTINCTS 


273 


kinds  noted  above.  In  the  first  place,  this  instinct,  like 
all  other  human  and  animal  qualities,  is  subject  to 
individual  variations  which,  in  our  present  state  of 
ignorance,  we  call  spontaneous  ; and  it  is  probable  that 
in  every  society  there  have  been  persons  in  whom  it  was 
decidedly  less  strong  than  in  the  average  human  being. 
Now,  in  respect  to  this  instinct,  as  well  as  the  instinct  of 
reproduction,  natural  selection  operates  in  the  most 
certain  and  direct  fashion  ; for  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  persons  in  whom  either,  or  both,  of  these  instincts 
are  weak  will  on  the  average  have  fewer  children  than 
those  in  whom  the  instincts  are  strong.  This  particular 
variation  is  thus  constantly  eliminated,  and  the  strength 
of  the  instinct  is  thereby  maintained  from  generation  to 
generation.  This  deduction  is  strongly  supported  by 
the  fact  that  in  our  own  country  one-quarter  of  the 
people  of  each  generation  become  the  parents  of  about 
one-half  of  the  population  of  the  succeeding  generation.^ 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that,  among  this  quarter  of  the 
population,  the  parental,  and  probably  also  the  repro- 
ductive, instinct  is  on  the  average  stronger  than  in  the 
remaining  three-quarters  who  produce  the  other  half 
of  the  next  generation.^ 

This  view  receives  further  strong  support  from  the 
fact  that  it  is  among  the  most  cultured  and  leisured 
classes  of  any  community  that  the  falling  birth-rate  first 
and  most  strongly  manifests  itself.  This  seems  to  have 
been  the  case  in  Greece  and  Rome,  and  it  has  been 
statistically  established  for  this  country  as  well  as  for 

* See  Professor  Karl  Pearson's  Chances  of  Death." 

* There  are  certainly  among  the  celibates  of  our  population  a 
certain  number  of  persons  who  know  of  sexual  desire  only  by 
hearsay  and  who  regard  it  as  a strange  madness  from  which 
they  are  fortunately  free.  C/.  Professor  Forel's  Sexuelle 
Frage.” 

T 


274 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


several  others ; * while  in  the  United  States  of  America 
the  difference  in  this  respect  between  the  cultured 
descendants  of  the  earlier  colonists  in  the  Eastern  States 
and  the  less  civilised  hordes  of  later  immigrants,  seems 
to  be  generally  admitted  and  to  be  recognised  as  a 
matter  for  serious  regret.  And  it  is  of  course  among 
the  cultured  classes  that  the  supernatural  and  social 
sanctions  are  most  weakened  by  the  habit  of  inde- 
pendent thought  and  action.  Again,  it  is  in  Australia 
where  the  supernatural  and  other  sanctions  are  rela- 
tively weak  and  the  average  level  of  education  and 
intelligence  is  high,  that  the  fall  of  the  birth-rate  is  ex- 
hibited very  markedly  by  all  classes  of  the  community. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  Jews  are  a people  that  has 
been  at  a fairly  high  level  of  civilisation  more  con- 
tinuously and  for  a longer  total  period  than  any  other 
outside  Asia ; yet  they  remain  prolific,  for  the  super- 
natural and  social  sanctions  that  maintain  the  family 
have  retained  an  undiminished  strength ; a fact  which 
may  be  ascribed  to  the  peculiar  position  of  Jewish  com- 
munities : they  live  mingled  with  others,  yet  distinct 
from  them,  a position  which  results  in  the  constant 
shedding  or  loss  from  the  community  of  those  members 
who  find  its  religious  teachings  or  social  institutions 
unsuited  to  their  temperament  and  disposition. 

We  may  find  similar  evidence  in  the  history  of  other 
peoples  of  long-continued  civilisation,  evidence,  that  is, 
that  where  religious  and  other  sanctions  give  adequate 
support  to  the  family  instincts  no  serious  diminution  of 
fertility  occurs.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  ancestor- 
worship  is  so  eminently  favourable  to  national  stability. 
The  cult  of  the  ancestor  and  of  the  family,  with  the 
patria  potestas,  the  immense  authority  given  by  law  and 

^ See  especially  David  Heron  (Drapers'  Company  Research 
Memoir),  ^‘On  the  Relation  of  Fertility  to  Social  Status,”  1906 


THE  FAMILY  INSTINCTS 


275 


custom  to  the  head  of  the  family,  counted  for  much  in 
the  strength  and  stability  of  ancient  Rome.  In  fact,  the 
high  civilisations  of  ancient  Greece  and  Rome  rested  on 
a firm  basis  of  this  kind  until  their  decline  began.^ 

The  cult  of  the  ancestor  has  played  a similar  part  in 
Japan.  For  there,  as  in  the  early  days  of  Greece  and 
of  Rome,  the  welfare  of  the  dead  man  is  dependent  on 
the  daily  ministrations  of  his  living  descendants,  and 
they  in  turn,  according  to  the  still-prevailing  belief,  owe 
their  successes  and  prosperity  to  the  active  benevolence 
of  the  spirits  of  their  ancestors.^  Hence  the  interests  of 
each  generation  are  intimately  bound  up  with  those  of 
the  generations  that  have  gone  before  and  of  those 
that  shall  come  after.  Hence,  in  order  to  secure  his 
own  happiness  as  well  as  that  of  his  ancestors  and 
descendants,  a man’s  first  care  and  duty  is  to  bring 
up  a family  that  will  carry  on  the  ancestral  cult.  It  is 
probable  that  China  also  owes  her  immense  stability 
and  latent  power  in  large  measure  to  similar  causes. 
h Hitherto  we  have  considered  the  social  importance  of 
^he  parental  instinct  only  in  its  relation  to  the  family. 
■^But,  if  our  account  of  this  instinct  in  Chapter  III.  was 
correct,  it  is  the  source,  not  only  of  parental  tenderness, 
but  of  all  tender  emotions  and  truly  benevolent  im- 
pulses, is  the  great  spring  of  moral  indignation,  and 
enters  in  some  degree  into  every  sentiment  that  can 
properly  be  called  love.  We  shall  then  attribute  to  it 
in  these  derived  or  secondary  applications  a wider  or 
narrower  field  of  influence  in  shaping  social  actions  and 
institutions,  according  as  we  incline  to  see  much  or 

‘ See  especially  Cite  Antique,’'  by  Fustel  de  Coulanges. 

* See  the  books  of  the  late  Lafcadio  Hearn,  especially  Japan  : 
an  Interpretation."  His  account  was  borne  out  by  the  recent 
newspaper-accounts  of  the  solemn  national  thanksgiving  to 
ancestors  after  the  successes  of  the  late  war. 


276 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


little  of  true  benevolence  at  work  in  the  world.  That 
the  impulse  of  this  instinct  is  one  of  the  great  social 
forces  seems  to  me  an  indisputable  fact.  Especially 
is  this  true  in  many  of  the  countries  in  which  the 
Christian  and  the  Buddhist  religions  prevail.  Some 
writers  would  seem  to  regard  the  charity  and  benevo- 
lence displayed  in  such  societies  as  wholly  due  to  the 
mild  teaching  of  these  religions.  But  no  teaching 
and  no  system  of  social  or  religious  sanctions  could 
induce  benevolence  in  any  people  if  their  minds  were 
wholly  lacking  in  this  instinct.  Such  influences  can 
only  favour  or  repress  in  some  degree  the  habitual  and 
customary  manifestations  of  the  innate  tendencies  ; and 
the  fact  that  these  religions  have  gained  so  wide  accept- 
ance shows  that  they  appeal  to  some  universal  element 
of  the  human  mind  ; while  the  specially  strong  appeal  of 
Christianity  to  the  feminine  mind,i  the  Catholic  cult  of 
the  Mother  and  Infant,  and  the  unmistakably  feminine 
cast  of  the  whole  system  as  compared  with  Moham- 
medan and  other  religions,  shows  that  we  are  right  in 
identifying  this  element  with  the  parental,  the  primarily 
maternal,  instinct. 

f This  instinct,  save  in  its  primary  application  in  the 
form  of  the  mother’s  protection  of  her  child,  is  not,  like 
the  reproductive  instinct,  one  of  overwhelming  force ; 
hence  the  extent  of  its  secondary  manifestations  is 
profoundly  influenced  by  custom  and  training.  To  this 
fact  must  be  ascribed  in  the  main  the  very  great  differ- 
ences between  communities  of  different  times  and  races 
in  respect  to  the  force  with  which  the  instinct  operates 
outside  the  family.  The  savage  who  is  a tender  father 
may  behave  in  an  utterly  brutal  manner  to  all  human 
beings  other  than  the  members  of  his  tribe.  But  such 

* According  to  Mr.  Fielding  Hall,  the  same  is  true  of  Bud- 
dhism; see  ‘'The  Soul  of  a People,’'  and  “A  People  at  School.” 


THE  FAMILY  INSTINCTS 


277 


brutal  behaviour  is  sanctioned  by  the  public  opinion  of 
the  tribe,  prescribed  by  custom  and  example,  and 
provoked  by  tribal  feuds.  That  races  differ  in  respect 
to  the  strength  of  this  instinct  is  probable  ; but  that  any 
are  entirely  devoid  of  it,  it  is  difficult  to  believe — if  only 
because  such  a race  would  fail  to  rear  its  progeny,  and 
therefore  could  not  survive.  Everywhere  one  may  see 
traces  of  its  influence.  In  the  ancient  classical  societies 
it  seems  to  have  played  a very  restricted  part ; but, 
even  in  the  worst  days  of  Rome’s  brutal  degradation, 
many  a man  was  kindly  to  his  slaves,  and  the  practice 
of  manumission  was  at  times  so  prevalent  as  to  excite 
some  uneasiness.  ,/t)n  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  necessary 
to  suppose  that  the  great  extension  of  benevolent 
action,  which  is  undoubtedly  one  of  the  most  notable 
features  of  the  present  age  of  our  civilisation,  denotes 
any  increase  in  the  innate  strength  of  this  instinct. 
How  this  great  extension  has  been  brought  about  in 
modern  times  is  a most  interesting  problem,  the  dis- 
cussion of  which  does  not  fall  within  the  scope  of  this 
book.  But  we  may  note  some  of  its  most  important 
social  effects. 

Among  the  most  obvious  of  these  effects  are  the 
humanitarian  regulations  of  civilised  warfare,  and  the 
devotion  of  vast  amounts  of  human  energy,  of  money  and 
material  resources  of  all  kinds,  by  our  modern  civilised 
communities  to  the  relief  of  the  poor  and  suffering,  to 
the  hospitals,  and  to  the  many  organisations  for  the 
distribution  of  charity  and  the  prevention  of  cruelty. 
A social  change  of  more  importance  from  the  point  of 
view  of  world-history  is  the  abolition  of  slavery  and 
serfdom  throughout  the  regions  of  Western  Civilisation. 
This  great  change,  which  marks  an  epoch  in  the  history 
of  civilisation,  is  undoubtedly  attributable  to  the 
increased  influence  of  this  instinct  in  modern  times. 


278 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


It  is  no  doubt  true  that  the  main  question  at  issue  in 
the  American  war  of  North  and  South  was  the  main- 
tenance of  the  federal  union  of  the  States.  And  there 
is  some  truth  in  the  cynical  dictum  that  the  abolition  of 
slavery  comes  when  slavery  ceases  to  be  economically 
advantageous — the  specially  advantageous  conditions 
being  an  unlimited  area  of  highly  fertile  soil  creating  a 
demand  for  an  abundance  of  unskilled  labour.  But  in 
the  liberation  of  the  slaves  of  the  British  West  Indies, 
which  cost  the  English  people  twenty  millions  of  hard 
cash,  disinterested  benevolence  certainly  played  a great 
and  essential  part ; and  the  same  is  true  of  the  libera- 
tion of  the  serfs  of  Russia  in  1861.* 

But  of  still  more  wide-reaching  importance  is  the 
admission  to  political  power  of  the  masses  of  the 
people,  which  in  this  and  several  other  countries  has 
been  carried  very  nearly  as  far  as  legislation  can  carry 
it.  This  no  doubt  has  been  due  to  the  rise  of  a demand 
for  such  admission  on  the  part  of  the  masses ; but,  as 
Mr.  B.  Kidd  ^ has  forcibly  argued,  this  demand  was  itself 
largely  created  by  the  teachings  of  leaders  moved  by 
the  benevolent  impulse,  and  it  would  have  failed  to 
obtain  satisfaction  if  the  power-holding  classes  had 
been  devoid  of  this  impulse,  and  if  very  many  of  their 
members  had  not  been  moved  by  it  to  accede  to  this 
demand  and  to  aid  in  the  accomplishment  of  this  great 
political  change. 

* See  Sir  D.  Mackenzie  Wallace’s  Russia,"  Chapter  xxix. 

* Principles  of  Western  Civilisation." 


CHAPTER  XI 


THE  INSTINCT  OF  PUGNACITY 
HE  instinct  of  pugnacity  has  played  a part  second 


to  none  in  the  evolution  of  social  organisation, 
and  in  the  present  age  it  operates  more  powerfully  than 
any  other  in  producing  demonstrations  of  collective 
emotion  and  action  on  a great  scale.  The  races  of 
men  certainly  differ  greatly  in  respect  to  the  innate 
strength  of  this  instinct ; but  there  is  no  reason  to 
think  that  it  has  grown  weaker  among  ourselves  under 
centuries  of  civilisation  ; rather,  it  is  probable,  as  we 
shall  see  presently,  that  it  is  stronger  in  the  European 
peoples  than  it  was  in  primitive  man.  But  its  modes 
of  expression  have  changed  with  the  growth  of  civilisa- 
tion ; as  the  development  of  law  and  custom  discourages 
and  renders  unnecessary  the  bodily  combat  of  indi- 
viduals, this  gives  place  to  the  collective  combat  of 
communities  and  to  the  more  refined  forms  of  combat 
within  communities.  It  is  observable  that,  when  a 
pugnacious  people  is  forcibly  brought  under  a system 
of  civilised  legality,  its  members  are  apt  to  display 
an  extreme  and,  to  our  minds,  absurd  degree  of 
litigiousness. 

The  replacement  of  individual  by  collective  pugnacity 
is  most  clearly  illustrated  by  barbarous  peoples  living 
in  small,  strongly  organised  communities.  Within  such 


28o 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


communities  individual  combat  and  even  expressions  of 
personal  anger  may  be  almost  completely  suppressed, 
while  the  pugnacious  instinct  finds  its  vent  in  perpetual 
warfare  between  communities,  whose  relations  remain 
subject  to  no  law.  As  a rule  no  material  benefit  is 
gained,  and  often  none  is  sought,  in  these  tribal  wars, 
which  often  result  in  the  weakening  and  even  the  ex- 
termination of  whole  villages  or  tribes.  Central  Borneo 
is  one  of  the  few  regions  in  which  this  state  of  things 
still  persists.  The  people  are  very  intelligent  and 
sociable  and  kindly  to  one  another  within  each  village 
community ; but,  except  in  those  regions  in  which 
European  influence  has  asserted  itself,  the  neighbouring 
villages  and  tribes  live  in  a state  of  chronic  warfare ; all 
are  kept  in  constant  fear  of  attack,  whole  villages  are 
often  exterminated,  and  the  population  is  in  this  way 
kept  down  very  far  below  the  limit  at  which  any  pressure 
on  the  means  of  subsistence  could  arise.  This  perpetual 
warfare,  like  the  squabbles  of  a roomful  of  quarrelsome 
children,  seems  to  be  almost  wholly  and  directly 
due  to  the  uncomplicated  operation  of  the  instinct 
of  pugnacity.  No  material  benefits  are  sought ; a few 
heads,  and  sometimes  a slave  or  two,  are  the  only 
trophies  gained  ; and,  if  one  asks  of  an  intelligent  chief 
why  he  keeps  up  this  senseless  practice  of  going  on  the 
warpath,  the  best  reason  he  can  give  is  that  unless  he 
does  so  his  neighbours  will  not  respect  him  and  his 
people,  and  will  fall  upon  them  and  exterminate  them. 
How  shall  we  begin  to  understand  the  prevalence  of 
such  a state  of  affairs,  if  we  regard  man  as  a rational 
creature  guided  only  by  intelligent  self-interest,  and  if 
we  neglect  to  take  account  of  his  instincts  ? And  it  is 
not  among  barbarous  or  savage  peoples  only  that  the 
instinct  of  pugnacity  works  in  this  way.  The  history 
of  Christendom  is  largely  the  history  of  devastating 


THE  INSTINCT  OF  PUGNACITY  281 


wars  from  which  few  individuals  or  societies  have 
reaped  any  immediate  benefit,  and  in  the  causation  of 
which  the  instinct  of  pugnacity  of  the  rulers,  or  of  the 
masses  of  the  peoples,  has  played  a leading  part.  In  our 
own  age  the  same  instinct  makes  of  Europe  an  armed 
camp  occupied  by  twelve  million  soldiers,  the  support 
of  which  is  a heavy  burden  on  all  the  peoples ; and  we 
see  how,  more  instantly  than  ever  before,  a whole  nation 
may  be  moved  by  the  combative  instinct — a slight  to 
the  British  flag,  or  an  insulting  remark  in  some  foreign 
newspaper,  sends  a wave  of  angry  emotion  sweeping 
across  the  country,  accompanied  by  all  the  character- 
istics of  crude  collective  mentation,  and  two  nations 
are  ready  to  rush  into  a war  that  cannot  fail  to  be 
disastrous  to  both  of  them.  The  most  serious  task  of 
modern  statesmanship  is,  perhaps,  to  discount  and  to 
control  these  outbursts  of  collective  pugnacity.  At 
the  present  time  custom  is  only  just  beginning  to  exert 
some  control  over  this  international  pugnacity,  and  we 
are  still  very  far  from  the  time  when  international  law, 
following  in  the  wake  of  custom,  will  render  the  pug- 
nacity of  nations  as  needless  as  that  of  the  individuals 
of  highly  civilised  states,  and  physical  combats  between 
them  as  relatively  infrequent. 

It  might  seem  at  first  sight  that  this  instinct,  which 
leads  men  and  societies  so  often  to  enter  blindly  upon 
deadly  contests  that  in  many  cases  are  destructive  to 
both  parties,  could  only  be  a survival  from  man’s  brutal 
ancestry,  and  that  an  early  and  a principal  feature  of 
social  evolution  would  have  been  the  eradication  of  this 
instinct  from  the  human  mind.  But  a little  reflection 
will  show  us  that  its  operation,  far  from  being  wholly 
injurious,  has  been  one  of  the  essential  factors  in  the 
evolution  of  the  higher  forms  of  social  organisation,  and, 
in  fact,  of  those  specifically  social  qualities  of  man,  the 


282 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


high  development  of  which  is  an  essential  condition  of 
the  higher  social  life. 

It  was  said  above  that  the  earliest  form  of  human 
society  was  in  all  probability  the  family,  and,  indeed, 
it  is  probable  that  in  this  respect  primitive  man  did  but 
continue  the  social  life  of  his  prehuman  ancestors.  But 
what  form  the  primitive  family  had,  and  in  what  way 
more  complex  forms  of  society  were  developed  from 
it,  are  obscure  and  much-disputed  questions.  Hence 
any  attempt  to  show  how  the  human  instincts  played 
their  parts  in  the  process  must  be  purely  speculative. 
Nevertheless  it  is  a legitimate  and  fascinating  subject 
for  speculation,  and  we  may  attempt  to  form  some 
notion  of  the  socialising  influence  of  the  instinct  of 
pugnacity  among  primitive  men  by  adopting  pro- 
visionally one  of  the  most  ingenious  of  the  speculative 
accounts  of  the  process.  Such  is  the  account  offered 
by  Messrs.  Atkinson  and  Andrew  Lang,*  which  may 
be  briefly  sketched  as  follows.  The  primitive  society 
was  a polygamous  family  consisting  of  a patriarch,  his 
wives  and  children.  The  young  males,  as  they  became 
full-grown,  were  driven  out  of  the  community  by  the 
patriarch,  who  was  jealous  of  all  possible  rivals  to 
his  marital  privileges.  They  formed  semi-independent 
bands  hanging,  perhaps,  on  the  skirts  of  the  family  circle, 
from  which  they  were  jealously  excluded.  From  time 
to  time  the  young  males  would  be  brought  by  their 
sex-impulse  into  deadly  strife  with  the  patriarch,  and, 
when  one  of  them  succeeded  in  overcoming  him,  this 
one  would  take  his  place  and  rule  in  his  stead,  A social 
system  of  this  sort  obtains  among  some  of  the  animals, 
and  it  seems  to  be  just  such  a system  as  the  fierce 
sexual  jealousy  of  man  and  his  polygamous  capacities 
and  tendencies  would  produce  in  the  absence  of  any 
• “The  Primal  Law." 


THE  INSTINCT  OF  PUGNACITY  283 


modifying  law  or  moral  tradition.  This  prohibition 
enforced  by  the  jealousy  of  the  patriarch  is  the  primal 
laWy  the  first  example  of  a general  prohibition  laid  upon 
the  natural  impulse  of  a class  of  human  beings  and 
upheld  by  superior  force  for  the  regulation  of  social 
relations. 

We  have  seen  in  Chapter  V.  that  jealousy  is  an 
emotion  dependent  upon  the  existence  of  a sentiment 
Whether  we  have  to  recognise  among  the  constituent 
dispositions  of  the  sentiment  an  instinct  of  acquisition 
or  possession,  is  a difficult  question  to  which  we  found 
it  impossible  to  give  a decided  answer.  But,  however 
that  may  be,  it  is  clear  that  the  principal  constituent  of 
the  emotion  of  male  jealousy,  especially  of  the  crude 
kind  excited  within  the  crude  sentiment  of  attachment 
or  ownership  which  the  primitive  patriarch  entertained 
for  his  family,  is  anger ; in  the  human,  as  well  as  many 
other  species,  the  anger  excited  in  connection  with  the 
sexual  instinct  is  of  the  most  furious  and  destructive 
intensity.  If,  then,  we  accept  this  hypothesis  of  the 
“ primal  law,”  we  must  believe  that  the  observance  of 
this  law  was  enforced  by  the  instinct  of  pugnacity. 

Now  an  instinct  that  led  to  furious  and  mortal 
combat  between  the  males  of  any  group  might  well 
determine  the  evolution  of  great  strength  and  ferocity 
and  of  various  weapons  and  defensive  modifications  of 
structure,  as  sexual  characters,  in  the  way  that  Darwin 
supposed  it  to  have  done  in  many  animal  species.^  But 
it  is  not  at  first  sight  obvious  how  it  should  operate  as 
a great  socialising  force.  If  we  would  understand  how 
it  may  have  done  so,  we  must  bear  in  mind  the  fact,  so 
strongly  insisted  on  by  Walter  Bagehot  in  his  brilliant 
essay,  Physics  and  Politics,”  * that  the  first  and  most 

* The  Descent  of  Man.” 

■ International  Scientific  Series. 


284 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


momentous  step  of  primitive  men  towards  civilisation 
must  have  been  the  evolution  of  rigid  customs,  the  en- 
forced observance  of  which  disciplined  men  to  the  habit 
of  control  of  the  immediate  impulses.  Bagehot  rightly 
maintained  that  the  achievement  of  this  first  step  of  the 
moral  ladder  must  have  been  a most  difficult  one  ; he 
wrote — ‘^Law,  rigid,  definite,  concise  law  was  the  primary 
want  of  early  mankind  ; that  which  they  needed  above 
anything  else,  that  wdiich  was  requisite  before  they 
could  gain  anything  else,”  before  they  could  gain  the 
advantages  of  social  co-operation.  Again,  he  wrote  : “ In 
early  times  the  quantity  of  government  is  much  more 
important  than  its  quality.  What  is  wanted  is  a com- 
prehensive rule  binding  men  together,  making  them  do 
the  same  things,  telling  them  what  to  expect  of  each 
other,  fashioning  them  alike,  and  keeping  them  so. 
What  the  rule  is  does  not  matter  so  much.  A good  rule 
is  better  than  a bad  one,  but  a bad  one  is  better  than 
none.”  When  Bagehot  goes  on  to  tell  us  how  law  estab- 
lished law-abidingness,  or  the  capacity  of  self-control, 
in  human  nature,  his  account  ceases  to  be  satisfactory  ; 
for  he  wrote  when  biologists  still  believed  with  Lamarck 
and  Darwin  and  Spencer  in  the  inheritance  of  acquired 
characters.  That  such  inheritance  is  possible  we  may 
no  longer  assume,  though  very  many  writers  on  social 
topics  still  make  the  assumption,  as  Bagehot  did,  and 
still  use  it  as  the  easy  key  to  all  problems  of  social 
evolution.  For  Bagehot  simply  assumed  that  the 
habit  of  self-control  and  of  obedience  to  law’' and  custom, 
forcibly  induced  in  the  members  of  succeeding  gene- 
rations, became  an  innate  quality  by  transmission  and 
accumulation  from  generation  to  generation.  While, 
then,  we  may  accept  Bagehot^s  dictum  that  it  is  difficult 
to  exaggerate  the  difference  between  civilised  and 
primitive  men  really  primitive  men,  not  the  savages 


THE  INSTINCT  OF  PUGNACITY  285 


of  the  present  time)  in  respect  to  their  innate  law- 
abidingness,  and  while  we  may  accept  also  his  view  that 
the  strict  enforcement  of  law  played  a great  part  in 
producing  this  evolution,  we  cannot  accept  his  view  of 
the  mode  of  operation  of  law  in  producing  this  all- 
important  change. 

But  the  hypothesis  of  the  ‘‘  primal  law  enables  us  to 
conceive  the  first  step  of  the  process  in  a manner  con- 
sistent with  modern  biological  principles.  For  offence 
against  the  “ primal  law  meant  death  to  the  offender, 
unless  he  proved  himself  more  than  a match  for  the 
patriarch.  Hence  the  ruthless  pugnacity  of  the  patri- 
arch must  have  constantly  weeded  out  the  more  reckless 
of  his  male  progeny,  those  least  capable  of  restraining 
their  sexual  impulse  under  the  threat  of  his  anger. 
Fear,  the  great  inhibitor,  must  have  played  a great  part 
in  inducing  observance  of  the  “primal  law”;  and  it 
might  be  suggested  that  the  principal  effect  of  the 
enforcement  of  this  law  must  have  been  to  increase  by 
selection  the  power  of  this  restraining  instinct.  But 
those  males  who  failed  to  engage  in  combat  would 
never  succeed  in  transmitting  their  too  timorous  natures 
to  a later  generation ; for  by  combat  alone  could  the 
headship  of  a family  be  obtained.  Hence  this  ruthless 
selection  among  the  young  males  must  have  led  to  the 
development  of  prudence,  rather  than  to  the  mere 
strengthening  of  the  instinct  of  fear. 

Now  prudent  control  of  an  impulse  implies  a much 
higher  type  of  mental  organisation,  a much  greater 
degree  of  mental  integration,  than  is  implied  by  the 
mere  inhibition  of  an  impulse  through  fear.  No  doubt 
the  instinct  of  fear  plays  a part  in  such  prudent  control, 
but  it  implies  also  a considerable  degree  of  development 
of  self-consciousness  and  of  the  self-regarding  sentiment 
and  a capacity  for  deliberation  and  the  weighing  of 


286 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


motives  in  the  light  of  self-consciousness.  If  an  indi- 
vidual has  such  capacities,  a moderate  strength  of  the 
fear-impulse  will  suffice  to  restrain  the  sex-impulse 
more  effectively  than  a very  strong  fear-impulse  oper- 
ating in  a less-developed  mind.  The  operation  of  the 
“ primal  law  ” will,  therefore,  have  tended  to  secure  that 
the  successful  rival  of  the  patriarch  should  have  strong 
instincts  of  sex  and  of  pugnacity  and  a but  moderately 
strong  fear-instinct,  combined  with  the  more  developed 
mental  organisation  that  permits  of  deliberation  and  of 
control  of  the  stronger  impulses  through  the  organised 
co-operation  of  the  weaker  impulses.  That  is  to  say, 
it  was  a condition  which  secured  for  the  family  com- 
munity a succession  of  patriarchs,  each  of  whom  was 
superior  to  his  rivals,  not  merely  in  power  of  combat, 
but  also  and  chiefly  in  power  of  far-sighted  control  of 
his  impulses.  Each  such  patriarch,  becoming  the  father 
of  the  succeeding  generation,  will  then  have  transmitted 
to  it  in  some  degree  his  exceptional  power  of  self- 
control.  In  this  way  the  “primal  law,’*  enforced  by 
the  fiercest  passions  of  primitive  man,  may  have 
prepared  human  nature  for  the  observance  of  laws  less 
brutally  and  ruthlessly  enforced,  may,  in  short,  have 
played  a great  part  in  developing  in  humanity  that 
power  of  self-control  and  law-abidingness  which  was  the 
essential  condition  of  the  progress  of  social  organisation. 

If  we  consider  human  societies  at  a later  stage  of 
their  development,  we  shall  see  that  the  pugnacious 
instinct  has  played  a similar  part  there  also.  And  in 
this  case  we  are  not  compelled  to  rely  only  on  specula- 
tive hypotheses,  but  can  find  inductive  support  for  our 
inference  in  a comparative  study  of  existing  savage 
peoples. 

When  in  any  region  social  organisation  had  pro- 
gressed so  far  that  the  mortal  combat  of  individuals 


THE  INSTINCT  OF  PUGNACITY  287 


was  replaced  by  the  mortal  combat  of  tribes,  villages,  or 
groups  of  any  kind,  success  in  combat  and  survival  and 
propagation  must  have  been  favoured  by,  and  have 
depended  upon,  not  only  the  vigour  and  ferocity  of 
individual  fighters,  but  also,  and  to  an  even  greater 
degree,  upon  the  capacity  of  individuals  for  united 
action,  upon  good  comradeship,  upon  personal  trust- 
worthiness, and  upon  the  capacity  of  individuals  to 
subordinate  their  impulsive  tendencies  and  egoistic 
promptings  to  the  ends  of  the  group  and  to  the 
commands  of  the  accepted  leader.  Hence,  wherever 
such  mortal  conflict  of  groups  prevailed  for  many 
generations,  it  must  have  developed  in  the  surviving 
groups  just  those  social  and  moral  qualities  of  indi- 
viduals which  are  the  essential  conditions  of  all  effective 
co-operation  and  of  the  higher  forms  of  social  organisa- 
tion. For  success  in  war  implies  definite  organisation, 
the  recognition  of  a leader,  and  faithful  observance  of 
his  commands ; and  the  obedience  given  to  the  war- 
chief  implies  a far  higher  level  of  morality  than  is 
implied  by  the  mere  observance  of  the  “primal  law” 
or  of  any  other  personal  prohibition  under  the  threat  of 
punishment.  A leader  whose  followers  were  bound  to 
him  by  fear  of  punishment  only  would  have  no  chance 
of  success  against  a band  of  which  the  members  were 
bound  together  and  to  their  chief  by  a true  conscien- 
tiousness arising  from  a more  developed  self-conscious- 
ness, from  the  identification  of  the  self  with  the  society, 
and  from  a sensitive  regard  on  the  part  of  each  member 
for  the  opinion  of  his  fellows. 

Such  conflict  of  groups  could  not  fail  to  operate 
effectively  in  developing  the  moral  nature  of  man ; 
those  communities  in  which  this  higher  morality  was 
developed  would  triumph  over  and  exterminate  those 
which  had  not  attained  it  in  equal  degree.  And  the 


288 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


more  the  pugnacious  instinct  impelled  primitive  societies 
to  warfare,  the  more  rapidly  and  effectively  must 
the  fundamental  social  attributes  of  men  have  been 
developed  in  the  societies  which  survived  the  ordeal. 

It  is  not  easy  to  analyse  these  moral  qualities  and  to 
say  exactly  what  elements  of  the  mental  constitution 
were  involved  in  this  evolution.  In  part  the  advance 
must  have  consisted  in  a further  improvement  of  the 
kind  we  have  supposed  to  be  effected  by  the  operation 
of  the  “ primal  law,”  namely,  a richer  self-consciousness, 
and  increased  capacity  for  control  of  the  stronger 
primary  impulses  by  the  co-operation  of  impulses 
springing  from  dispositions  organised  about  the  idea  of 
the  self.  It  may  also  have  involved  a relative  increase 
of  strength  of  the  more  specifically  social  tendencies, 
namely,  the  gregarious  instinct,  the  instincts  of  self- 
assertion  and  subjection,  and  the  primitive  sympathetic 
tendency ; the  increase  of  strength  of  these  tendencies 
in  the  members  of  any  social  group  would  render  them 
capable  of  being  more  strongly  swayed  by  regard  for 
the  opinions  and  feelings  of  their  fellows,  and  so  would 
strengthen  the  influence  of  the  public  opinion  of  the 
group  upon  each  member  of  it. 

These  results  of  group-selection  produced  by  the 
mortal  conflicts  of  small  societies,  and  ultimately  due  to 
the  strength  of  the  pugnacious  instinct,  are  very  clearly 
illustrated  by  the  tribes  of  Borneo.  As  one  travels  up 
any  one  of  the  large  rivers,  one  meets  with  tribes  that 
are  successively  more  warlike.  In  the  coast  regions  are 
peaceful  communities  which  never  fight,  save  in  self- 
defence,  and  then  with  but  poor  success ; while  in  the 
central  regions,  where  the  rivers  take  their  rise,  are  a 
number  of  extremely  warlike  tribes,  whose  raids  have 
been  a constant  source  of  terror  to  the  communities 
settled  in  the  lower  reaches  of  the  rivers.  And  between 


THE  INSTINCT  OF  PUGNACITY  289 


these  tribes  at  the  centre  and  those  in  the  coast  regions 
are  others  that  serve  as  a buffer  between  them,  being 
decidedly  more  bellicose  than  the  latter  but  less  so 
than  the  former.  It  might  be  supposed  that  the 
peaceful  coastwise  people  would  be  found  to  be  superior 
in  moral  qualities  to  their  more  warlike  neighbours  ; 
but  the  contrary  is  the  case.  In  almost  all  respects  the 
advantage  lies  with  the  warlike  tribes.  Their  houses 
are  better  built,  larger,  and  cleaner;  their  domestic 
morality  is  superior ; they  are  physically  stronger,  are 
braver,  and  physically  and  mentally  more  active,  and  in 
general  are  more  trustworthy.  But,  above  all,  their 
social  organisation  is  firmer  and  more  efficient,  because 
their  respect  for  and  obedience  to  their  chiefs,  and  their 
loyalty  to  their  community,  are  much  greater ; each 
man  identifies  himself  with  the  whole  community  and 
accepts  and  loyally  performs  the  social  duties  laid  upon 
him.  And  the  moderately  warlike  tribes  occupying  the 
intermediate  regions  stand  midway  between  them  and 
the  people  of  the  coast  as  regards  these  moral  qualities.^ 
Yet  all  these  tribes  are  of  closely  allied  racial  stocks, 
and  the  superior  moral  qualities  of  the  central  tribes 
would  seem  to  be  the  direct  result  of  the  very  severe 
group-selection  to  which  their  innate  pugnacity  has 
subjected  them  for  many  generations.  And  the  greater 
strength  of  their  pugnacious  instinct,  which  displays 
itself  unmistakably  in  their  more  martial  bearing  and 
more  fiery  temper,  is  probably  due  ultimately  to  the 
* These  statements  are  based  not  merely  on  my  own  observa- 
tions during  a sojourn  of  six  months  among  these  tribes, 
but  also  on  the  authority  of  my  friend  Dr.  Charles  Hose, 
who  for  more  than  twenty  years  has  exercised  a very  remark- 
able influence  over  many  of  the  tribes  of  Sarawak,  and  has 
done  very  much  to  establish  the  beneficent  rule  of  the  Kajah, 
H.H.  Sir  Charles  Brooke,  over  the  wilder  tribes  of  the  outlying 
districts, 
u 


290 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


more  bracing  climate  of  the  central  regions,  which,  by 
favouring  a greater  bodily  activity,  has  led  to  more  fre- 
quent conflicts  and  a stricter  weeding  out  of  the  more 
inoffensive  and  less  energetic  individuals  and  groups. 

Such  tribal  conflict,  which  in  this  remote  region  has 
continued  up  to  the  present  time,  has  probably  played 
in  past  ages  a great  part  in  preparing  the  civilised 
peoples  of  Europe  for  the  complex  social  life  that  they 
have  developed.  Mr.  Kidd  has  insisted  forcibly  upon 
this  view,  pointing  out  that  the  tribes  of  the  central  and 
northern  regions  of  Europe,  which  have  played  so 
great  a part  in  the  later  history  of  civilisation,  were 
subjected  for  long  ages  to  a process  of  military  group- 
selection  which  was  probably  of  extreme  severity,  and 
which  rendered  them,  at  the  time  they  first  appear  in 
history,  the  most  pugnacious  and  terrible  warriors  that 
the  world  has  ever  seen.^  This  process  must  have 
developed  not  only  the  individual  fighting  qualities,  but 
also  the  qualities  that  make  for  conscientious  conduct 
and  stable  and  efficient  social  organisation.  These 
effects  were  clearly  marked  in  the  barbarians  who 
overran  the  Roman  Empire.  The  Germanic  tribes 
were  perhaps  more  pugnacious  and  possessed  of  the 
military  virtues  in  a higher  degree  than  any  other 
people  that  has  existed  before  or  since.  They  were  the 
most  terrible  enemies,  as  Julius  Caesar  found  ; they 
could  never  be  subdued  because  they  fought,  not  merely 
to  gain  any  specific  ends,  but  because  they  loved  fighting, 
because  they  were  innately  pugnacious.  Their 

* ^‘Principles  of  Western  Civilisation/’  p.  156:  “The  ruling 
fact  which  stands  clearly  out  in  regarding  this  movement  of 
peoples  as  a whole,  is  that  it  must  have  represented  a process 
of  military  selection,  probably  the  most  sustained,  prolonged, 
and  culminating  in  character  that  the  race  has  ever  under- 
gone.” 


THE  INSTINCT  OF  PUGNACITY  291 


religion  and  the  character  of  their  gods  reflected  their 
devotion  to  war  ; centuries  of  Christianity  have  failed  to 
eradicate  this  quality,  and  the  smallest  differences  of 
Opinion  anc  belief  continue  to  furnish  the  pretexts  for 
fresh  combats.  Mr.  Kidd  argues  strongly  that  it  is 
the  social  qualities  developed  by  this  process  of  military 
group-selection  which,  more  than  anything  else,  have 
enabled  these  peoples  to  build  up  a new  civilisation  on 
the  ruins  of  the  Roman  Empire,  and  to  carry  on  the 
progress  of  social  organisation  and  of  civilisation  to  the 
point  it  has  now  reached. 

These  important  social  effects  of  the  pugnacious 
instinct  seem  to  be  forcibly  illustrated  by  a comparison 
of  the  peoples  of  Europe  with  those  of  India  and  of 
China,  two  areas  comparable  with  it  in  extent,  in 
density  of  settled  population,  and  in  age  of  civilisation. 
In  neither  of  these  areas  has  there  been  a similar 
perennial  conflict  of  societies.  In  both  of  them,  the 
mass  of  the  people  has  been  subjected  for  long  ages 
to  the  rule  of  dominant  castes  which  have  established 
themselves  in  successive  invasions  from  the  central 
plateau  of  Asia,  that  great  breeding-ground  of  warlike 
nomadic  hordes.  The  result  in  both  cases  is  the  same. 
The  bulk  of  the  people  are  deficient  in  the  pugnacious 
instinct ; they  are  patient  and  long  suffering,  have  no 
taste  for  war,  and,  in  China  especially,  they  despise  the 
military  virtues.  At  the  same  time  they  seem  to  be 
deficient  in  those  social  qualities  which  may  be  summed 
up  under  the  one  word  “ conscientiousness,’^  and  which 
are  the  cement  of  societies  and  essential  factors  of  their 
progressive  integration.  Accordingly,  in  the  societies 
formed  by  these  peoples,  the  parts  hang  but  loosely 
together — they  are  but  partially  integrated  and  loosely 
organised.  Among  these  peoples  Buddhism,  the  re- 
ligion of  peace,  found  a congenial  home,  and  its 


2p2 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


precepts  have  governed  the  practice  of  great  masses 
of  men  in  a very  real  manner,  which  contrasts  strongly 
with  the  formal  acceptance  and  practical  neglect  of 
the  peaceful  precepts  of  their  religion  that  has  always 
characterised  the  Christian  peoples  of  Western  Europe. 

In  this  connection  it  is  interesting  to  compare  the 
Japanese  with  the  Chinese  people.  Whether  the  strain 
of  Malayan  blood  in  the  Japanese  has  endowed  them 
from  the  first  with  a stronger  instinct  of  pugnacity  than 
their  cousins  the  Chinese,  it  is  impossible  to  say.  But 
it  is  certain  that  the  people,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
they  have  long  recognised  in  their  Emperor  a common 
spiritual  head  of  the  empire,  have  been  until  very 
recently  divided  into  numerous  clans  that  have  been 
almost  constantly  at  war  with  one  another,  society 
being  organised  on  a military  system  not  unlike  that  of 
feudal  Europe.  Hence  the  profession  of  the  soldier  has 
continued  to  be  held  in  the  highest  honour,  and  the  fight- 
ing qualities,  as  well  as  the  specifically  social  qualities 
of  the  people,  have  been  brought  to  a very  high  level. 

In  Japan  also  Buddhism  has  long  been  firmly 
established ; but,  as  with  Christianity  in  Europe,  its 
preaching  of  peace  has  never  been  practically  accepted 
by  the  mass  of  the  people ; the  old  ancestor-worship 
has  continued  to  flourish  side  by  side  with  it,  and  now, 
on  the  accentuation  of  the  warlike  spirit  induced  by 
contact  with  the  outside  world,  seems  to  be  pushing  the 
religion  of  peace  into  the  background. 

In  addition  to  this  important  role  in  the  evolution  of 
the  moral  qualities,  the  pugnacious  instinct  has  exerted 
a more  direct  and  hardly  less  important  influence  in  the 
life  of  societies. 

We  have  seen  how  this  instinct  is  operative  in  the 
emotion  of  revenge  and  in  moral  indignation.  These 
two  emotions  have  played  leading  parts  in  the  growth 


THE  INSTINCT  OF  PUGNACITY  293 


and  maintenance  of  every  system  of  criminal  law  and 
every  code  of  punishment ; for,  however  widely  authors 
may  differ  as  to  the  spirit  in  w’hich  punishment  should 
be  administered,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  was 
originally  retributive,  and  that  it  still  retains  something 
of  this  character  even  in  the  most  highly  civilised 
societies.  The  administration  of  criminal  law  is  then 
the  organised  and  regulated  expression  of  the  anger  of 
society,  modified  and  softened  in  various  degrees  by 
the  desire  that  punishment  may  reform  the  wrong-doer 
and  deter  others  from  similar  actions. 

Though  with  the  progress  of  civilisation  the  public 
administration  of  justice  has  encroached  more  and 
more  on  the  sphere  of  operation  of  the  anger  of 
individuals  as  a power  restraining  offences  of  all 
kinds,  yet,  in  the  matter  of  offences  against  the  person, 
individual  anger  remains  as  a latent  threat  whose 
influence  is  by  no  means  negligible  in  the  regulation 
of  manners,  as  we  see  most  clearly  in  those  countries  in 
which  the  practice  of  duelling  is  not  yet  obsolete.  And 
in  the  nursery  and  the  school  righteous  anger  will 
always  have  a great  and  proper  part  to  play  in  the 
training  of  ihe  individual  for  his  life  in  society. 

It  was  suggested  in  Chapter  IV.  that  emulation  is 
rooted  in  an  instinct  which  was  evolved  in  the  human 
mind  by  a process  of  differentiation  from  the  instinct  of 
pugnacity.  However  that  may  be,  it  seems  clear  that 
this  impulse  is  distinct  from  both  the  combative  and 
the  self-assertive  impulses  ; and  just  as,  according  to 
our  supposition,  the  emulative  impulse  has  acquired 
in  the  course  of  the  evolution  of  the  human  mind  an 
increasing  importance,  so  in  the  life  of  societies  it 
tends  gradually  to  take  the  place  of  the  instinct  of 
pugnacity,  as  a force  making  for  the  development  of 
social  life  and  organisation. 


294 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


It  is  among  the  peoples  of  Western  Europe,  who,  as 
we  have  seen,  have  been  moulded  by  a piolonged  and 
severe  process  of  military  selection,  that  the  emulative 
impulse  is  most  active.  With  us  it  supplies  the  zest 
and  determines  the  forms  of  almost  all  uur  games 
and  recreations;  and  Professor  James  is  guilty  of 
picturesque  exaggeration  only,  when  he  cays  “ nine- 
tenths  of  the  work  of  our  world  is  done  by  it.”  Our 
educational  system  is  founded  upon  it ; it  is  the  social 
force  underlying  an  immense  amount  of  strenuous 
exertion  ; to  it  we  owe  in  a great  measure  even  our 
science,  our  literature,  and  our  art ; for  it  is  a strong, 
perhaps  an  essential,  element  of  ambition,  that  last 
infirmity  of  noble  minds,  in  which  it  operates  through, 
and  under  the  direction  of,  a highly  developed  social 
self-consciousness. 

The  emulative  impulse  tends  to  assert  itself  in  an 
ever-widening  sphere  of  social  life,  encroaching  more 
and  more  upon  the  sphere  of  the  combative  impulse, 
and  supplanting  it  more  and  more  as  a prime  mover  of 
both  individuals  and  societies.  This  tendency  brings 
with  it  a very  important  change  in  the  conditions  of 
social  evolutioxi.  While  the  combative  impulse  leads  to 
the  destruction  of  the  individuals  and  societies  that 
are  least  cap^ible  of  self-defence,  the  emulative  impulse 
does  not  diiectly  lead  to  the  extermination  of  indi- 
viduals or  societies.  It  is,  rather,  compatible  with  a 
tender  solicitude  for  their  continued  existence ; the 
millionaire,  who,  prompted  by  this  impulse,  has 
succeeded  in  appropriating  a proportion  of  the  wealth 
of  the  community  vastly  in  excess  of  his  deserts,  may 
spend  a part  of  it  on  free  libraries,  hospitals,  or  soup- 
kitchens.  In  fact,  the  natural  tendency  of  the  emulative 
impulse  is  to  preserve,  rather  than  to  destroy,  defeated 
competitors ; for  their  regards  bring  a fuller  satisfaction 


THE  INSTINCT  OF  PUGNACITY  295 


to  the  impulse,  and  the  exploitation  of  their  labour 
by  the  successful  rival  is  the  natural  issue  of  compe- 
tition. Therefore,  as  emulation  replaces  pugnacity 
within  any  society,  it  tends  to  put  a stop  to  natural 
selection  of  individuals  within  that  society ; so  that 
the  evolution  of  human  nature  becomes  increasingly 
dependent  on  group-selection.  And,  if  international 
emulation  should  completely  supplant  international 
pugnacity,  group-selection  also  will  be  rendered  very 
much  less  effective.  To  this  stage  the  most  highly 
civilised  communities  are  tending,  in  accordance  with 
the  law  that  the  collective  mind  follows  in  the  steps  of 
evolution  of  the  individual  mind  at  a great  interval 
of  time.  There  are  unmistakeable  signs  that  the 
pugnacity  of  nations  is  being  supplanted  by  emulation, 
that  warfare  is  being  replaced  by  industrial  and  intel- 
lectual rivalry;  that  wars  between  civilised  nations, 
which  are  replacing  the  mortal  conflicts  between  indi- 
viduals and  between  societies  dominated  by  the  spirit 
of  pugnacity,  are  tending  to  become  mere  incidents  of 
their  commercial  and  industrial  rivalry,  being  undertaken 
to  secure  markets  or  sources  of  supply  of  raw  material 
which  shall  bring  industrial  or  commercial  advantage  to 
their  possessor. 

The  tendency  of  emulation  to  replace  pugnacity  is, 
then,  a tendency  to  bring  to  an  end  what  has  been 
an  important,  probably  the  most  important,  factor 
of  progressive  evolution  of  human  nature,  namely,  the 
selection  of  the  fit  and  the  extermination  of  the  less  fit 
(among  both  individuals  and  societies)  resulting  from 
their  conflicts  with  one  another.^ 

The  attempt  now  being  made  to  found  a science  and  an  art 
of  Eugenics  owes  its  importance  largely  to  this  tendency. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  GREGARIOUS  INSTINCT 

IT  was  pointed  out  in  Chapter  III.  that  the  gregarious 
instinct  plays  a great  part  in  determining  the  forms 
of  our  recreations ; and  in  Chapter  VI.  it  was  shown 
how,  in  co-operation  with  the  primitive  sympathetic 
tendency,  it  leads  men  to  seek  to  share  their  emotions 
with  the  largest  possible  number  of  their  fellows. 
Besides  determining  the  forms  of  recreations,  this 
instinct  plays  a much  more  serious  part  in  the  life  of 
civilised  societies.  It  is  sometimes  assumed  that  the 
monstrous  and  disastrous  growth  of  London  and  of 
other  large  towns  is  the  result  of  some  obscure  economic 
necessity.  But,  as  a matter  of  fact,  London  and  many 
other  large  towns  have  for  a long  time  past  far  exceeded 
the  proportions  that  conduce  to  economic  efficiency  and 
healthy  social  life,  just  as  the  vast  herds  of  bison,  or 
other  animals,  referred  to  in  Chapter  III.,  greatly 
exceed  the  size  necessary  for  mutual  defence.  We  are 
often  told  that  the  dulness  of  the  country  drives  the 
people  to  the  towns.  But  that  statement  inverts  the 
truth.  It  is  the  crowd  in  the  towns,  the  vast  human 
herd,  that  exerts  a baneful  attraction  on  those  outside 
it.  People  have  lived  in  the  country  for  hundreds  of 
generations  without  finding  it  dull.  It  is  only  the 
existence  of  the  crowded  towns  that  creates  by  contrast 

296 


THE  GREGARIOUS  INSTINCT 


297 


the  dulness  of  the  country.  As  in  the  case  of  the 
animals,  the  larger  the  aggregation  the  greater  is  its 
power  of  attraction  ; hence,  in  spite  of  high  rents,  high 
rates,  dirt,  disease,  congestion  of  traffic,  ugliness,  squalor, 
and  sooty  air,  the  large  towns  continue  to  grow  at  an 
increasing  rate,  while  the  small  towns  diminish  and  the 
country  villages  are  threatened  with  extinction. 

That  this  herding  in  the  towns  is  not  due  to  any 
economic  necessities  of  our  industrial  organisation,  is 
shown  by  the  fact  that  it  takes  place  to  an  equally 
great  and  regrettable  extent  in  countries  where  the 
industrial  conditions  are  very  different.  In  Australia, 
where  everything  favours  an  agricultural  or  pastoral 
mode  of  life,  half  the  population  of  a continent  is 
crowded  into  a few  towns  on  the  coast.  In  China, 
where  industry  persists  almost  entirely  in  the  form  of 
handicrafts  and  where  economic  conditions  are  extremely 
different  from  our  own,  we  find  towns  like  Canton  con- 
taining three  million  inhabitants  crowded  together  even 
more  densely  than  in  London  and  under  conditions  no 
less  repulsive. 

In  England  we  must  attribute  this  tendency  chiefly 
to  the  fact  that  the  spread  of  elementary  education  and 
the  freer  intercourse  between  the  people  of  the  different 
parts  of  the  country  have  broken  down  the  bonds  of 
custom  which  formerly  kept  each  man  to  the  place  and 
calling  of  his  forefathers  ; for  custom,  the  great  conser- 
vative force  of  society,  the  great  controller  of  the 
individual  impulses,  being  weakened,  the  deep-seated 
instincts,  especially  the  gregarious  instinct,  have  found 
their  opportunity  to  determine  the  choices  of  men. 
Other  causes  have,  of  course,  co-operated  and  have 
facilitated  the  aggregations  of  population  ; but  without 
the  instinctive  basis  they  would  probably  have  produced 
only  slight  effects  of  this  kind. 


298 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


The  administrative  authorities  have  shown  of  late 
years  a disposition  to  encourage  in  every  possible  way 
this  gregarious  tendency.  On  the  slightest  occasion 
they  organise  some  show  which  shall  draw  huge  crowds 
to  gape,  until  now  a new  street  cannot  be  opened 
without  the  expenditure  of  thousands  of  pounds  in 
tawdry  decorations,  and  a foreign  prince  cannot  drive 
to  a railway  station  without  drawing  many  thousands 
of  people  from  their  work  to  spend  the  day  in  worse 
than  useless  idleness,  confirming  their  already  over- 
developed gregarious  instincts.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  excessive  indulgence  of  this  impulse  is  one 
of  the  greatest  demoralising  factors  of  the  present  time 
in  this  country,  just  as  it  was  in  Rome  in  the  days  of 
her  declining  power  and  glory. 

In  this  connection  we  may  briefly  consider  the  views 
of  Professor  Giddings  ^ on  the  consciousness  of  kind,” 
which  he  would  have  us  regard  as  the  basic  principle  of 
social  organisation.  He  writes,  “ In  its  widest  extension 
the  consciousness  of  kind  marks  ofif  the  animate  from 
the  inanimate.  Within  the  wide  class  of  the  animals 
it  marks  ofif  species  and  races.  Within  racial  lines  the 
consciousness  of  kind  underlies  the  more  definite  ethnical 
and  political  groupings,  it  is  the  basis  of  class  distinc- 
tions, of  innumerable  forms  of  alliance,  of  rules  of  inter- 
course, and  of  peculiarities  of  policy.  Our  conduct 
towards  those  whom  we  feel  to  be  most  like  ourselves 
is  instinctively  and  rationally  different  from  our  conduct 
towards  others,  whom  we  believe  to  be  less  like  our- 
selves. Again,  it  is  the  consciousness  of  kind,  and 
nothing  else,  which  distinguishes  social  conduct,  as  such, 
from  purely  economic,  purely  political,  or  purely  religious 
conduct ; for  in  actual  life  it  constantly  interferes  with 
the  theoretically  perfect  operation  of  the  economic, 
* Principles  of  Sociology/'  p.  18  (my  quotation  is  abridged). 


THE  GREGARIOUS  INSTINCT 


299 


political,  or  religious  motive.  The  working  man  joins 
a strike  of  which  he  does  not  approve  rather  than  cut 
himself  off  from  his  fellows.  For  a similar  reason  the 
manufacturer  who  questions  the  value  of  protection  to 
his  own  industry  yet  pays  his  contribution  to  the  pro- 
tectionist campaign  fund.  The  Southern  gentleman, 
who  believed  in  the  cause  of  the  Union,  none  the  less 
threw  in  his  fortunes  with  the  Confederacy,  if  he  felt 
himself  to  be  one  of  the  Southern  people  and  a stranger 
to  the  people  of  the  North.  The  liberalising  of  creeds 
is  accomplished  by  the  efforts  of  men  who  are  no 
longer  able  to  accept  the  traditional  dogma,  but  who 
desire  to  maintain  associations  which  it  would  be 
painful  to  sever.  In  a word,  it  is  about  the  conscious- 
ness of  kind  that  all  other  motives  organise  themselves 
in  the  evolution  of  social  choice,  social  volition,  or  social 
policy.” 

All  that  attraction  of  like  to  like,  which  Giddings 
here  attributes  to  the  “ consciousness  of  kind  ” is,  I 
think,  to  be  regarded  as  the  work  of  the  gregarious 
impulse,  operating  at  a high  level  of  mental  life  in 
conjunction  with  other  impulses.  That  ‘‘consciousness 
of  kind,”  the  recognition  of  degrees  of  likeness  of  others 
to  one’s  self,  underlies  all  such  cases  as  Professor 
Giddings  mentions,  and  is  presupposed  by  all  social 
life,  is  ^ue  only  if  we  use  the  words  in  a very  loose 
sense,  /if  we  would  state  more  accurately  the  facts 
vaguely  implied  by  this  phrase,  we  must  say  that  the 
gregarious  impulse  of  any  animal  receives  satisfaction 
only  through  the  presence  of  animals  similar  to  itself,  and 
the  closer  the  similarity  the  greater  is  the  satisfaction. 
The  impulse  of  this  instinct  will  bring  and  keep  together 
in  one  herd  animals  of  different  species,  as  when  we  see 
horses  and  bullocks  grazing  together,  or  birds  of  several 
species  in  one  flock  ; but  it  brings  and  keeps  together 


300 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


much  more  powerfully  animals  of  one  species.  Just  so, 
in  any  human  being  the  instinct  operates  most  power- 
fully in  relation  to,  and  receives  the  highest  degree  of 
satisfaction  from  the  presence  of,  the  human  beings  who 
most  closely  resemble  that  individual,  those  who  behave 
in  like  manner  and  respond  to  the  same  situations  with 
similar  emotions.  An  explicit  “ consciousness  of  kind 
in  any  literal  sense  of  the  words  implies  a relatively 
high  level  of  mental  development  and  a developed  self- 
consciousness,  and  this  is  by  no  means  necessary  to 
the  operation  of  the  gregarious  instinct.  And  such 
“ consciousness  of  kind  ” can  of  itself  do  nothing,  it  is 
not  a social  force,  is  not  a motive,  can  of  itself  generate 
no  impulse  or  desire.  It  is  merely  one  of  the  most 
highly  developed  of  the  cognitive  processes  through 
which  the  gregarious  instinct  may  be  brought  into  play. 
If  this  instinct  were  lacking  to  men,  the  most  accurate 
recognition  of  personal  likenesses  and  differences  would 
fail  to  produce  the  effects  attributed  to  consciousness 
of  kind.” 

It  is  because  we  are  not  equally  attracted  by  all  social 
aggregations,  but  find  the  greatest  satisfaction  of  the 
gregarious  impulse  in  the  society  of  those  most  like 
ourselves,  that  a segregation  of  like  elements  occurs  in 
all  communities.  Among  uncivilised  people  we  usually 
find  communities  of  the  same  tribe,  and  tribes  closely 
allied  by  blood,  occupying  contiguous  areas ; and  the 
effects  of  this  tendency  persist  in  the  civilised  countries 
of  the  present  day  in  the  form  of  local  differences  of 
physical  and  mental  characters  of  the  populations  of  the 
various  counties  or  other  large  areas. 

The  same  tendency  is  illustrated  by  the  formation  in 
the  United  States  of  America  of  large,  locally  circum- 
scribed communities  of  various  European  extractions  ; 
and  in  our  large  towns  it  manifests  itself  in  the  segrega- 


THE  GREGARIOUS  INSTINCT 


301 


tion  of  people  of  similar  race  and  occupation  and  social 
status,  a process  which  results  in  striking  differences 
between  the  various  districts  or  quarters  of  the  town, 
and  striking  uniformities  within  the  limits  of  any  one 
such  quarter.  In  this  tendency  we  may  find  also  an 
explanation  of  the  curious  fact  that  the  traders  dealing 
in  each  kind  of  object  are  commonly  found  closely 
grouped  in  one  street  or  in  neighbouring  streets — the 
coach-builders  in  Long  Acre,  the  newsvendors  in  Fleet 
Street,  the  doctors  in  Harley  Street,  the  shipping  offices 
in  Leadenhall  Street,  and  so  on.  This  segregation 
of  like  trades,  which  might  seem  to  be  a curious 
economic  anomaly  under  our  competitive  system,  is 
not  peculiar  to  European  towns.  It  forced  itself  upon 
my  attention  in  the  streets  of  Canton,  where  it  obtains 
in  a striking  degree,  and  also  in  several  Indian  towns. 

We  may  briefly  sum  up  the  social  operation  of  the 
gregarious  instinct  by  saying  that,  in  early  times  when 
population  was  scanty,  it  must  have  played  an  impor- 
tant part  in  social  evolution  by  keeping  men  together 
and  thereby  occasioning  the  need  for  social  laws  and 
institutions ; as  well  as  by  providing  the  conditions  of 
aggregation  in  which  alone  the  higher  evolution  of  the 
social  attributes  was  possible ; but  that  in  highly 
civilised  societies  its  functions  are  less  important, 
because  the  density  of  population  ensures  a sufficient 
aggregation  of  the  people ; and  that,  facilities  for 
aggregation  being  so  greatly  increased  among  modern 
nations,  its  direct  operation  is  apt  to  produce  anomalous 
and  even  injurious  social  results. 


CHAPTER  XIII 


THE  INSTINCTS  THROUGH  WHICH  RELIGIOUS  CON- 
CEPTIONS  AFFECT  SOCIAL  LIFE 

ANY  authors  have  written  of  the  religious  in- 


stinct or  instincts,  though  few  have  made  any 
serious  attempt  to  make  clear  the  meaning  they  attach 
to  these  phrases.^  Those  who  use  these  phrases  usually 
seem  to  imply  that  this  assumed  religious  instinct  of 
man  is  one  that  is  his  peculiar  endowment  and  has  no 
relation  to  the  instincts  of  the  animals.  But  I do  not 
know  that  this  is  now  seriously  maintained  by  any 
psychologist.  The  emotions  that  play  a principal  part 
in  religious  life  are  admiration,  awe,  and  reverence.  In 
Chapter  V.  we  have  analysed  these  emotions  and 
found  that  admiration  is  a fusion  of  wonder  and  nega- 
tive self-feeling ; that  awe  is  a fusion  of  admiration  with 
fear ; and  that  reverence  is  awe  blended  with  tender 
emotion. 

Religion  has  powerfully  influenced  social  development 
in  so  many  ways,  and  the  primary  emotions  and  im- 
pulses through  which  the  religious  conceptions  have 
exerted  this  influence  have  co-operated  so  intimately, 
that  they  must  be  considered  together  when  we  attempt 
to  illustrate  their  role  in  social  life. 

Something  has  already  been  said  of  the  role  of  fear  in 
the  chapter  treating  of  pugnacity.  Whether  or  no  the 

* Thus  Professor  M.  Jastrow  writes  : ''The  certainty  that  the 
religious  instinct  is,  so  far  as  the  evidence  goes,  innate  in  man, 
suffices  as  a starting-point  for  a satisfactory  classification.”  The 
same  author  tells  us  that  " the  definite  assumption  of  a religious 
instinct  in  man  forms  part  of  almost  every  definition  of  religion 
proposed  since  the  appearance  of  Schleiermacher’s  discourses  ” 
("  The  Study  of  Religion,”  pp.  loi  and  153), 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  RELIGION  303 


hypothesis  of  the  “ primal  law  ” be  well  founded,  fear 
must  have  played  in  primitive  societies  some  such  part 
as  was  assigned  to  it  in  discussing  that  doctrineZ/T hat 
is  to  say,  fear  of  physical  punishment  inflicted  by  the 
anger  of  his  fellows  must  have  been  the  great  agent  of 
discipline  of  primitive  man  ; through  such  fear  he  must 
first  have  learnt  to  control  and  regulate  his  impulses  in 
conformity  with  the  needs  of  social  life. 

^ut,  at  an  early  stage  of  social  development,  awe  must 
have  supplemented  and  in  part  supplanted  simple  fear 
in  this  role.  For,  as  with  the  development  of  language 
man  became  capable  of  a fuller  life  of  ideas,  the  instinct 
of  curiosity,  which  in  the  animals  merely  serves  to  rivet 
their  attention  upon  unfamiliar  objects,  must  have  been 
frequently  excited  by  the  display  of  forces  that  in 
creatures  of  a lower  level  of  development  excite  fear 
only.  This  instinct  must  then  have  kept  his  thoughts 
at  work  upon  these  objects  of  his  wonder,  and  especially 
upon  those  which  excited  not  only  wonder  but  fear. 
These  must  have  become  the  objects  of  man’s  awful 
contemplation,  and  he  began  to  evolve  theories  to 
account  for  them,  theories  of  which,  no  doubt,  he  felt 
the  need  as  guides  to  action  in  the  presence  of  these 
forces. 

We  may  assume  that  primitive  man  lacked  almost 
completely  the  conception  of  mechanical  causation. 
For  the  modern  savage  mechanical  causation  is  the 
explanation  of  but  a small  part  of  the  natural  processes 
which  interest  him  through  affecting  his  welfare  for 
good  or  ill.  For  those  of  us  who  have  grown  up 
familiar  with  the  modern  doctrine  of  the  prevalence  of 
mechanical  causation  throughout  the  material  world,  it 
is  difficult  to  realise  how  enormous  is  the  distortion  of 
the  facts  of  immediate  experience  wrought  by  that 
doctrine,  by  how  great  an  effort  of  abstraction  it  has 
’ P.  282. 


304 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


been  reached.  The  savage  is  familiar  with  the  sequence 
of  movement  upon  impact,  but  such  sequences  are  far 
from  invariable  in  his  experience,  and  constitute  but  a 
very  small  proportion  of  the  events  which  interest  him. 
The  fall  of  bodies  to  the  ground,  the  flowing  of  water, 
the  blowing  of  the  wind,  the  motions  of  the  heavenly 
bodies,  the  growth  and  movements  of  animals  and 
plants,  thunder,  lightning,  rain,  fire,  and  the  emission 
and  reflection  of  light  and  heat — these  are  prominent 
among  the  things  that  interest  him,  and  in  none  of 
them  is  there  any  obvious  indication  of  mechanical 
operation,  y^he  one  kind  of  causation  with  which  the 
uncultured  man  is  thoroughly  familiar  is  his  own  voli- 
tional action,  issuing  from  feeling,  emotion,  and  desire  ; 
and  this  naturally  and  inevitably  becomes  for  him  the 
type  on  which  he  models  his  theories  of  the  causation 
of  terrible  events.  Here  we  touch  the  fringe  of  an 
immense  subject,  the  evolution  of  religious  conceptions, 
which  we  cannot  pursue.  It  must  suffice  to  say  that 
Professor  Tylor's  doctrine  of  animism,  as  set  forth  in 
his  great  work  on  “ Primitive  Culture,”  is  probably  the 
best  account  we  yet  have  of  the  early  steps  of  this 
evolution.  Let  us  note  merely  that  in  all  probability 
primitive  man,  like  ourselves,  was  apt  to  accept  without 
wonder,  without  pondering  and  reasoning  upon  them, 
the  beneficent  processes  of  nature,  the  gentle  rain,  the 
light  and  warmth  of  the  sun,  the  flowing  of  the  river, 
the  healthy  growth  of  animal  and  vegetable  life  ; but 
that  his  wonder  was  especially  aroused  by  those  things 
and  events  which  excited  also  his  fear,  by  disease  and 
death,  pestilence  and  famine,  storm  and  flood,  lightning 
and  thunder,  and  the  powerful  beasts  of  prey.  For, 
while  the  beneficent  processes  are  regular,  gentle,  and 
familiar,  these  others  are  apt  to  come  suddenly,  irregu- 
larly, and  apparently  capriciously,  and  are  therefore 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  RELIGION  305 


unfamiliar  and  startling,  as  well  as  hurtful  and  irresis- 
tible. On  such  objects  and  events,  then,  man’s  won- 
dering thoughts  were  concentrated,  about  them  his 
imagination  chiefly  played.  Hence  it  followed  that  the 
powers  which  his  imagination  created  for  the  explana- 
tion of  these  events  were  conceived  by  him  more  or  less 
vaguely  as  terrible  powers  ready  at  every  moment  to 
bring  disaster  upon  him  and  his  community.  There- 
fore he  walked  in  fear  and  trembling,  and  was  deeply 
concerned  to  learn  how  to  avoid  giving  offence  to  these 
mysterious  and  fearful  powers.  And,  as  soon  as  these 
powers  began  to  be  conceived  by  man  as  personal 
powers,  they  must  have  evoked  in  him  the  attitude  and 
impulse  of  subjection  and  the  emotion  of  negative  self- 
feeling, which  are  rooted  in  the  instinct  of  subjection. 
Or  perhaps  it  would  be  truer  to  say  that,  as  man  began 
to  form  conceptions  of  these  forces  of  nature,  they 
evoked  in  him  the  impulse  and  emotion  of  this  instinct, 
threw  him  into  the  submissive  attitude  characteristic  of 
this  instinct,  which  is  essentially  a personal  attitude, 
one  implying  a personal  relation  ; and  that  primitive 
man,  finding  himself  in  this  attitude  before  these  powers, 
was  thus  led  to  personify  them,  to  attribute  to  them  the 
personal  attributes  of  strength  and  anger,  which  are  the 
normal  and  primitive  excitants  of  this  instinct.  Hence 
his  emotion  took  the  complex  form  of  awe  (a  tertiary 
compound  of  fear,  wonder,  and  negative  self-feeling  i) ; 
that  is,  he  not  only  feared,  and  wondered  at,  these 
powers,  but  humbled  himself  before  them,  and  sought 
to  gain  and  to  obey  the  slightest  indications  of  their 
wills.2 

* C/.  p.  131. 

* Certain  of  these  forces  of  nature  were  less  terrible  than 
others,  e.g.,  rain,  and  the  growth  of  plants  and  animals,  and  man 
made  the  bold  experiment  of  attempting  to  control  them, 


306 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


It  is  obvious  that  conceptions  of  this  sort,  once 
achieved  and  accepted  by  all  members  of  a com- 
munity with  unquestioning  belief,  must  have  been  very 
powerful  agencies  of  social  discipline.  The  cause  of 
every  calamity,  befalling  either  the  individual  or  the 
community,  would  be  sought  in  some  offence  given 
to  the  beings  thus  vaguely  conceived  ; and  primitive 
man  would  be  apt  to  regard  as  the  source  of  offence 
any  action  at  all  unusual,  at  all  out  of  the  ordinary, 
whether  of  individuals  or  of  the  community.  Hence 
the  conceptions  of  these  awe-inspiring  beings  would 
lead  to  increased  severity  of  social  discipline  in 
two  ways  : firstly,  by  causing  society  to  enforce  its 
customary  laws  more  rigidly  than  was  the  rule  so  long 

proceeding  by  a purely  empirical  method  and  guided  by  the 
slightest  indications  to  belief  in  the  success  of  his  experiments  ; 
5uch  seemingly  successful  procedures  then  became  conventional 
and  recognised  modes  of  influencing  these  powers.  In  so  far  as 
man  seemed  to  find  himself  able  to  control  and  coerce  any  of 
these  forces,  his  attitude  and  emotion  in  presence  of  them  would 
be  those  of  the  instinct  of  self-assertion,  even  though  he  might 
continue  to  be  filled  with  fear  and  wonder.  This  complex 
emotional  state  seems  to  be  the  characteristically  superstitious 
one,  and  the  attitude  and  practices  are  those  of  magic.  I sug- 
gest that  the  fundamental  distinction  between  religious  and 
magical  practices  is  not,  as  is  sometimes  said,  that  religion  con- 
ceives the  powers  it  envisages  as  personal  powers,  while  magic 
conceives  them  as  impersonal ; but  rather  that  the  religious 
attitude  is  always  that  of  submission,  the  magical  attitude  that  of 
self-assertion ; and  that  the  forces  which  both  magical  and 
religious  practices  are  concerned  to  influence  may  be  conceived 
in  either  case  as  personal  or  impersonal  powers.  Hence  the 
savage,  who  at  one  time  bows  down  before  his  fetish  in  supplica- 
tion, and  at  another  seeks  to  compel  its  assistance  by  threats  or 
spells,  adopts  toward  the  one  object  alternately  the  religious  and 
the  magical  attitude.  The  same  fundamental  difference  of  atti- 
tude and  emotion  distinguishes  religion  from  science,  into  which 
magic  becomes  transformed  as  civilisation  progresses. 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  RELIGION  307 


as  breaches  of  the  law  were  regarded  as  merely  natural 
offences  against  members  of  the  community ; for  the 
breaking  of  custom  by  any  individual  was  now  believed 
to  bring  grave  risks  to  the  whole  community,  which 
therefore  was  collectively  concerned  to  prevent  and  to 
punish  any  such  breach  : secondly,  by  producing  a very 
great  increase  in  the  number  and  kinds  of  customary 
prohibitions  and  enforced  observances;  ior  post  hoc  ergo 
propter  hoc  is  the  logic  of  uncultured  man,  and  every 
unusual  act  followed  by  success  or  disaster  must  have 
tended  to  become  a customary  observance  or  the 
subject  of  a social  prohibition. 

Thus  these  conceptions  of  supernal  powers,  the  pro- 
ducts of  man's  creative  imagination  working  through, 
and  under  the  driving  power  of,  the  instincts  of  fear, 
curiosity,  and  subjection,  became  the  great  generators 
and  supporters  of  custom.  The  importance  of  the 
social  operation  of  these  instincts  was,  then,  very  great ; 
for  the  first  requisite  of  society,  the  prime  condition  of 
the  social  life  of  man,  was,  in  the  words  of  Bagehot,  a 
hard  crust  or  cake  of  custom.  In  the  struggle  for 
existence  only  those  societies  survived  which  were  able 
to  evolve  such  a hard  crust  of  custom,  binding  men 
together,  assimilating  their  actions  to  the  accepted 
standards,  compelling  control  of  the  purely  egoistic 
impulses,  and  exterminating  the  individuals  incapable 
of  such  control. 

We  see  the  same  result  among  all  savage  communities 
still  existing  on  the  earth,  and  among  all  the  peoples  of 
whom  we  have  any  record  at  the  dawn  of  civilisation. 
Their  actions,  whether  individual  or  collective,  are  ham- 
pered, controlled,  or  enforced  at  every  step  by  custom. 
In  Borneo,  for  example,  an  expedition  prepared  by 
months  of  labour  will  turn  homeward  and  give  up  its 
objects  if  bad  omens  are  observed — if  a particular  bird 


3o8 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


calls  on  one  side  or  the  other,  or  flies  across  the  river 
in  some  particular  fashion  ; or  a newly-married  and 
devoted  couple  will  separate  if  on  the  wedding  day  the 
cry  of  a deer  is  heard  near  the  house. 

There  is  no  end  to  the  curious  and  absurd  customs, 
generally  supported  by  supernatural  sanctions,  by  which 
the  actions  of  savages  and  barbarians  are  commonly 
surrounded  and  hemmed  in.  We  have  to  remember 
that,  in  the  case  of  existing  savage  communities,  the 
growth  and  multiplication  of  customs  may  have  been 
proceeding  through  all  the  ages  during  which  the  few 
progressive  peoples  have  been  evolving  their  civilisation. 
But  enough  is  now  known  of  the  primitive  age  of  ancient 
Greece  and  Rome  to  show  that  the  great  civilisations  of 
these  states  took  their  rise  among  peoples  bound  hand 
and  foot  by  religious  custom  and  law  as  rigidly  as  any 
savages,^  and  to  show  also  that  the  dominant  religious 
emotion  was  fear.^ 

We  may  assume  with  confidence  that  the  formation 

* The  system  of  omens  of  the  Romans  was  not  only  similar  in 
general  outline  to  that  of  some  existing  communities,  but  closely 
resembled  in  many  of  its  details  that  observed  at  the  present  day 
by  tribes  of  Central  Borneo — a remarkable  illustration  of  the 
uniformity  of  the  human  mind.  (See  paper  by  the  author,  in  con- 
junction with  Dr.  C.  Hose,  on  *'The  Relations  of  Men  and  Animals 
in  Sarawak,”  Journal  of  the  Anthropological  Institute,  1901.) 

» Fustel  de  Coulanges  has  drawn  a vivid  picture  of  the 
dominance  of  this  religion  of  fear  in  ancient  Greece  and  Rome  ; 
he  writes : Ainsi,  en  temps  de  paix  et  en  temps  de  guerre,  la 

religion  intervenait  dans  tous  les  actes.  Elle  etait  partout 
presente,  elle  enveloppait  Thomme.  L’ame,  le  corps,  la  vie 
privee,  la  vie  publique,  les  repas,  les  fetes,  les  assemblees,  les 
tribunaux,  les  combats,  tout  etait  sous  Tempire  de  cette  religion 
de  la  cite.  Elle  reglait  toutes  les  actions  de  Thom  me,  disposait 
de  tous  les  instants  de  sa  vie,  fixait  toutes  ses  habitudes.  Elle 
gouvernait  Tetre  liumain  avec  une  autorite  si  absolue  qu'il  ne 
restait  rien  qui  fut  en  dehors  d'elle.  . . . Cette  religion  etait; 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  RELIGION  309 


of  a mass  of  customary  observance  and  prohibition  was 
a principal  feature  of  the  evolution  of  all  human  societies 
that  have  risen  above  the  lowest  level  and  have  survived 
through  any  considerable  period  of  time ; not  only 
because  the  existence  of  such  a crust  of  custom  is 
observable  in  all  savage  and  barbarous  communities, 
but  also  because  in  its  earlier  stage  the  process  must 
have  so  strengthened  the  societies  in  which  it  took  place 
that  rival  societies  in  which  it  failed  could  not  have 
stood  up  against  them  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 
And  this  essential  step  of  social  evolution  was,  as  we 
have  seen,  in  the  main  produced  by  the  co-operation  of 
the  instincts  of  fear,  curiosity,  and  subjection. 

The  difficult  thing  to  understand  is  how  any  societies 
ever  managed  to  break  their  cake  of  custom,  to  become 
progressive  and  yet  to  survive.  As  a matter  of  fact, 

un  ensemble  mal  lie  de  petites  croyances,  de  petites  pratiques, 
de  rites  minutieux.  II  n’en  fallait  pas  chercher  le  sens ; il  n’y 
avait  pas  a reflechir,  a se  rendre  compte.  ...  La  religion  etait 
un  lien  materiel,  une  chaine  qui  tenait  Thomme  esclave.  L’homme 
se  Tetait  faite,  et  il  etait  gouyerne  par  elle.  II  en  avait  peur  et 
n’osait  ni  raisonner,  ni  discuter,  ni  regarder  en  face.  . . . Ni 
les  dieux  n’aimaient  Thomme,  ni  Thomme  n’aimait  ses  dieux. 
Il  croyait  a leur  existence,  mais  il  aurait  parfois  voulu  qu'ils 
n’existassent  pas.  Meme  ses  dieux  domestiques  ou  nationaux,  il 
les  redoutait,  il  craignait  d'etre  trahi  pareux.  Encourir  la  haine 
de  ces  etres  invisibles  etait  sa  grande  inquietude.  Il  etait  occupe 
toute  sa  vie  a les  apaiser.  . . . En  effet,  cette  religion  si  com- 
pliquee  etait  une  source  de  terreurs  pour  les  anciens ; comme  la 
foi  et  la  purete  des  intentions  etaient  peu  de  chose,  et  que  toute 
la  religion  consistait  dans  la  pratique  minutieuse  d'innombrables 
prescriptions,  on  devait  toujours  craindre  d’avoir  commis  quelque 
negligence,  quelque  omission  ou  quelque  erreur,  et  Ton  n’ etait 
jamais  sur  de  n’etre  pas  sous  le  coup  de  la  colere  ou  de  la  rancune 
de  quelque  dieu."  As  to  the  rites  : “ L’ alteration  la  plus  legere 
troublait  et  bouleversait  la  religion  de  la  patrie,  et  transformait 
les  dieux  protecteurs  en  autant  d'ennemis  cruels'"  (^^La  Cite 
antique,”  pp.  186-196). 


310 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


very  few  have  become  progressive,  and  fewer  still  have 
long  survived  the  taking  of  this  step.  The  great  majority 
have  remained  in  the  bonds  of  custom.  And  these 
customs  have  grown  ever  more  rigid  and  more  remote 
in  form  from  primitive  customs,  and  often  more  un- 
reasonable and  absurd ; in  many  cases  they  have 
assumed  forms  so  grotesque  that  it  is  difficult  to 
suggest  their  psychological  origin  and  history;  and 
in  many  cases  their  multiplicity  and  rigidity  have 
increased,  until  they  have  far  exceeded  the  socially 
advantageous  limits. 

In  many  regions  the  fearful  element  in  religion  pre- 
dominated more  and  more,  the  gods  increasingly  assumed 
a cruel  and  bloodthirsty  character,  until,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  Aztecs  of  ancient  Mexico,  the  religious  ritual  by 
which  they  were  appeased  involved  the  sacrifice  of  herds 
of  victims,  and  their  altars  were  constantly  wet  with 
human  blood. 

These  elements  and  forces  of  primitive  religion  have 
lived  on,  continuing  to  play  their  parts,  while  religion 
rose  to  a higher  plane  on  which  tender  emotion,  in  the 
form  of  gratitude,  mingled  more  and  more  with  awe, 
blended  with  it,  and  converted  it  to  reverence. 

This  change  in  the  nature  of  religious  emotion  among 
those  peoples  that  have  survived  and  progressed  was  a 
natural  consequence  of  their  success  in  the  struggle  of 
groups  for  survival.  For  the  surviving  communities  are 
those  whose  gods  have  in  the  main,  not  only  spared 
them,  not  only  abstained  from  bringing  plague  and 
famine  and  military  disaster  upon  them  in  too  severe 
measure,  but  have  actively  supported  them  and  enabled 
them  to  overcome  their  enemies.  Communities  that  are 
continuously  successful  in  battle  naturally  tend  to  con- 
ceive the  divine  power  as  a god  of  battles  who  smites 
the  enemy  hip  and  thigh  and  delivers  them  into  the 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  RELIGION  311 


hands  of  his  chosen  people  to  be  their  slaves  and  to  add 
to  their  wealth  and  power.  Thus  the  early  Romans, 
as  they  emerged  triumphant  from  successive  wars  with 
the  neighbouring  cities  and  grew  in  power  and  wealth, 
naturally  and  inevitably  acquired  some  confidence  in 
the  beneficence  of  their  gods  ; they  began  to  fear  them 
less  and  to  feel  some  gratitude  towards  them. 

The  utterly  cruel  gods  could  continue  to  survive 
only  among  communities  not  subjected  to  any  severe 
struggle  with  other  groups,  as,  for  example,  among  the 
comparatively  isolated  Aztecs  of  Mexico. 

Nevertheless,  in  almost  all  religions,  fear  of  divine 
punishment  has  continued  to  play  its  all-important  part 
in  securing  observance  of  social  custom  and  law,  and  in 
leading  communities  to  enforce  their  customs  with  severe 
penalties.  The  divine  power  remains  for  long  ages  a 
very  jealous  god  (or  gods),  whose  anger  against  a whole 
people  may  be  stirred  by  the  offences  of  individuals. 
This  feature,  namely,  communal  responsibility  before 
the  gods,  to  which  in  primitive  societies  the  super- 
natural sanctions  owe  their  tremendous  power  as  agents 
of  social  discipline,  was  clearly  present  even  in  the 
religion  of  Athens  at  the  time  of  its  highest  culture ; 
and  even  in  our  own  age  and  country  the  belief  still 
survives  and  finds  occasional  expression  (or  did  so 
very  recently)  in  the  observance  of  days  of  national 
humiliation. 

But,  as  societies  became  larger  and  more  complex, 
this  principle  necessarily  weakened.  Man's  sense  of 
justice  rebelled  against  the  ascription  of  so  much  injus- 
tice to  the  gods,  whom  he  was  learning  to  regard  with 
gratitude  and  reverence  as  well  as  awe.  Man  is  never 
long  content  to  worship  gods  of  moral  character  greatly 
inferior  to  his  own.  Hence  the  onus  of  responsibility 
for  breaches  of  law  and  custom  tends  to  be  shifted 


3t^ 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


back  to  the  offending  individual.  And  then,  since  it 
was  obvious  in  every  age  that  the  wicked  man  often 
flourishes  during  this  life,  it  became  necessary  to  assume 
that  the  vengeance  of  the  supernatural  powers  falls  upon 
him  in  the  life  beyond  the  grave.  Hence  we  find  that, 
while  societies  are  small  and  compact,  communal  respon- 
sibility for  individual  wrong-doing  is  the  rule,  and  the 
idea  of  punishment  after  death  is  hardly  entertained  ; but 
that,  with  the  growth  in  size  and  complexity  of  a society 
and  with  the  improvement  of  its  moral  ideas,  belief  in  com- 
munal responsibility  declines,  and  belief  in  punishment 
of  wrong-doing  after  death  arises  to  take  its  place  as  the 
effective  sanction  of  custom  and  law.  The  most  notable 
example  of  this  process  is,  of  course,  afforded  by  the 
hell-fire  which  has  played  so  great  a part  in  the  sterner 
forms  of  Christianity.  - And  the  long  persistence  of  fear 
and  awe  in  religion  is  well  illustrated  by  the  phrase 
widely  current  among  the  generation  recently  passed 
away,  “an  upright,  god-fearing  man,*'  a phrase  which 
expresses  the  tendency  to  identify  uprightness  with 
god-fearingness,  or,  rather,  to  recognise  fear  as  the 
source  and  regulator  of  social  conduct.  It  is  a nice 
question : To  what  extent  is  the  lapse  from  orthodox 
observances,  so  remarkable  and  widespread  among  the 
more  highly  civilised  peoples  at  the  present  time,  due  to 
the  general  softening  of  religious  teaching,  to  the  lapse 
of  the  doctrine  of  divine  retribution  to  a very  secondary 
position,  and  to  the  discredit  into  which  the  flames  of 
hell  have  fallen  ? ^ 

It  has  been  contended  by  some  authors  that  religion 

' On  the  great  role  of  fear  in  the  more  primitive  forms  of 
religion,  and  the  decline  of  its  influence  in  recent  times,  see  an 
article  by  Professor  J.  H.  Leuba,  Fear,  Awe,  and  the  Sublime 
in  Religion,”  in  the  American  Journal  of  Religious  Psychology 
vol.  ii. 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  REUGION  313 


and  morality  were  primitively  distinct,  and  that  Ihc 
intimate  connection  commonly  obtaining  between  them 
in  civilised  societies  arose  comparatively  late  in  the 
course  of  social  development.  This  contention,  which 
is  opposed  to  the  view  of  religious  development 
sketched  in  the  foregoing  pages,  is  true  only  if  we 
attach  an  unduly  narrow  meaning  to  the  words  re- 
ligion’'and  “morality.”  Although  many  of  the  modes  of 
conduct  prescribed  by  primitive  and  savage  custom  and 
enforced  by  supernatural  sanctions  are  not  such  as  we 
regard  as  moral,  and  are  in  many  cases  even  detri- 
mental to  the  simple  societies  in  which  such  customs 
obtain,  and  so  cannot  be  justified  by  any  utilitarian 
principle,  yet  we  must  class  the  observance  of  such 
custom  as  moral  conduct.  For  the  essence  of  moral 
conduct  is  the  performance  of  social  duty,  the  duty 
prescribed  by  society,  as  opposed  to  the  mere  following 
of  the  promptings  of  egoistic  impulses.  If  we  define 
moral  conduct  in  this  broad  sense,  and  this  is  the  only 
satisfactory  definition  of  it  ^ — then,  no  matter  how  gro- 
tesque and,  from  our  point  of  view,  how  immoral  the 
prescribed  codes  of  conduct  of  other  societies  may 
appear  to  be,  we  must  admit  conformity  to  the  code 
to  be  moral  conduct ; and  we  must  admit  that  religion 
from  its  first  crude  beginnings  was  bound  up  with 
morality  in  some  such  way  as  we  have  briefly  sketched ; 
that  the  two  things,  religion  and  morality,  were  not  at 
first  separate  and  later  fused  together ; but  that  they 
were  always  intimately  related,  and  have  reciprocally 
acted  and  reacted  upon  one  another  throughout  the 
course  of  their  evolution.  We  must  recognise  also  that 

* There  is,  of  course,  the  higher  kind  of  morality  of  the  man 
who,  while  accepting  in  the  main  the  prescribed  social  code, 
attempts  by  his  example  and  precept  to  improve  it  in  certain 
respects. 


314 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


a firm  and  harmonious  relation  between  them  has  been  in 
every  age  a main  condition  of  the  stability  of  societies. 

The  hypothetical  sketch  of  the  early  development  of 
morality,  the  most  essential  condition  of  all  develop- 
ment of  social  life,  contained  in  the  foregoing  pages 
may  be  summarised  as  follows : Moral  conduct  con- 
sists in  the  regulation  and  control  of  the  immediate 
promptings  of  impulse  in  conformity  with  some  pre- 
scribed code  of  conduct.  The  first  stage  was  the 
control  of  impulse  through  fear  of  individual  retribu- 
tion. Advance  from  this  level  took  place  through 
three  principal  changes:  (i)  the  general  recognition 
and  customary  observance  of  individual  rights  which 
before  had  been  claimed  only  by  individuals  and  en- 
I forced  only  by  their  superior  strength;  (2)  an  increase 
\in  the  number  of  kinds  of  action  regulated  by  cus- 
tomary law  ; (3)  an  increase  of  the  effectiveness  of  the 
sanctions  of  these  laws ; the  principal  change  in  this 
connection  being  the  introduction  of  supernatural 
powers  powers  which  we  regard  as  supernatural) 
as  the  guardians  or  patrons  of  custom,  resulting  (a)  in 
the  stern  enforcement  of  customs  by  the  whole  com- 
munity, which  feels  itself  collectively  responsible  to 
these  powers,  and  (d)  in  the  supplementing  of  the  fear 
of  human  retribution  by  the  fear  of  divine  retribution  ; 
(4)  a change  in  the  innate  dispositions  of  men,  consist- 
ing in  a development  of  those  features  of  the  mind 
which  render  possible  a prudent  and  more  complete 
control  of  the  primary  impulses,  a change  effected  in 
jthe  earlier  stages  chiefly  by  individual  selection,  in  later 
istages  chiefly  by  military  group-selection. 

In  the  production  of  this  evolution  of  morality  the 
instincts  of  pugnacity  (probably  largely  under  the  form 
of  male  jealousy)  and  of  fear  were  the  all-important 
factors  as  regards  the  first  stages  ; while  in  later  stages 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  RELIGION  315 


these  great  socialising  forces  were  supplemented  by  the 
impulses  of  curiosity  or  wonder,  of  subjection,  and,  at 
a still  later  stage,  by  the  tender  protective  impulse 
evoked  principally  in  the  form  of  gratitude  towards 
the  protecting  deities. 

A few  more  words  must  be  said  about  the  role  of 
curiosity  as  a force  in  the  life  of  societies.  For, 
although  it  has  no  doubt  played,  largely  under  the 
forms  of  wonder  and  admiration,  a leading  part  in 
the  evolution  of  religion,  and  in  so  far  has  been  one 
of  the  conservative  forces  of  society,  it  has  played  also 
a no  less  important  part  of  a very  different  tendency. 
The  instinct  of  curiosity  is  at  the  base  of  many  of  man's 
most  splendid  achievements,  for  rooted  in  it  are  his 
speculative  and  scientific  tendencies.  It  has  been  justly 
maintained  by  J.  S.  Mill,  by  T.  H.  Buckle,  and  others, 
that  the  free  and  effective  operation  of  these  tendencies 
in  any  society  is  not  only  the  gauge  of  that  society’s 
position  in  the  scale  of  civilisation,  but  also  the  principal 
condition  of  the  progress  of  a people  in  all  that  consti- 
tutes civilisation.  No  attempt  can  be  made  here  to 
support  this  view.  But  it  may  be  pointed  out  that  its 
truth  is  brought  home  to  the  mind  by  cursorily  reviewing 
the  periods  of  the  greatest  achievements  of  specu- 
lative reason.  Such  a review  will  show  that  these 
periods  coincide  approximately  with  the  periods  of  the 
most  rapid  progress  of  social  evolution ; each  such 
period  of  the  life  of  a people  being  commonly  fol- 
lowed by  one  of  social  stagnation,  during  which  the 
leading  minds  remain  content  to  brood  over  the  wisdom 
of  the  ancient  sages,  Confucius,  Aristotle,  or  Galen, 
regarding  their  achievements  as  unapproachable, 
authoritative,  and  supreme. 

It  ia  the  insatiable  curiosity  of  the  modern  European 


316 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


and  American  mind  that,  more  than  anything  else,  dis- 
tinguishes it  from  all  others  and  is  the  source  of  the 
immensely  increased  power  over  nature  and  over  man 
that  we  now  possess.  Contrast  our  sceptical,  insatiable, 
North-Pole-hunting  disposition  with  that  of  most  Eastern 
peoples.* 

If  we  attempt  briefly  to  characterise  the  achievements 
that  we  owe  to  the  speculative  tendencies  rooted  in  the 
instinct  of  curiosity,  we  find  that  they  may  for  the  most 
part  be  summed  up  under  the  head  of  improvements  in 
our  conception  of  causation.  Mr.  Stuart  Glennie  has 
formulated,  as  the  fundamental  law  of  intellectual  de- 
velopment, the  law  of  the  advance  from  a quantitatively 
undetermined  to  a quantitatively  determined  conception 
of  the  reciprocal  action  or  interaction  of  all  things  ; that 
is  to  say,  he  maintains  that  the  main  cause  of  human 

* This  contrast  cannot  be  better  illustrated  than  by  quoting 
a part  of  a letter  from  a Turkish  official  to  an  English  seeker 
after  statistical  information  : “ The  thing  you  ask  of  me  is  both 
difficult  and  useless.  Although  I have  passed  all  my  days  in  this 
place,  I have  neither  counted  the  houses,  nor  inquired  into  the 
number  of  the  inhabitants ; and  as  to  what  one  person  loads  on 
his  mules  and  the  other  stows  away  in  the  bottom  of  his  ship, 
that  is  no  business  of  mine.  But,  above  all,  as  to  the  previous 
history  of  this  city,  God  only  knows  the  amount  of  dirt  and  con- 
fusion that  the  infidels  may  have  eaten  before  the  coming  of  the 
sword  of  Islam.  It  were  unprofitable  for  us  to  inquire  into  it. 
O my  soul  I O my  lamb  ! seek  not  after  the  things  which  con- 
cern thee  not.  Thou  earnest  with  us  and  we  welcomed  thee— go 
in  peace.  . . . Listen,  O my  son  ! There  is  no  wisdom  equal 
unto  the  belief  in  God  ! He  created  the  world,  and  shall  we 
liken  ourselves  unto  Him  in  seeking  to  penetrate  into  the 
mysteries  of  His  creation  ? Shall  we  say.  Behold  this  star 
spinneth  round  that  star,  and  this  other  star  with  a tail  goeth 
and  cometh  in  so  many  years  I Let  it  go  I He  from  whose 
hand  it  came  will  guide  and  diiect  it."  The  letter  is  quoted  in 
full  by  Professor  James  (from  whom  I copy)  from  Sir  A.  Layard’s 

Nineveh  and  Babylon." 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  RELIGION  317 


progress  is  the  advance  from  very  imperfect  and  mis- 
leading views  of  causation  to  more  accurate  views ; and 
in  place  of  Comte’s  three  stages  of  thought — the  theo- 
logical, the  metaphysical,  and  the  positive — he  would 
distinguish  the  magical,  the  supernatural,  and  the 
scientific  stages  of  this  advance  in  man’s  notion  of 
causation. 

There  is  truth  in  this  formulation ; but  we  must 
recognise  that  the  stages  do  not  succeed  one  another 
in  clearly  distinguishable  periods  of  time,  but  rather  that 
the  three  modes  of  thought  coexist  among  every  people 
that  has  progressed  beyond  savagery,  and  will  probably 
always  coexist : we  must  recognise  that  progress  con- 
sists in,  and  results  from,  the  increasing  dominance  of 
the  second,  and  especially  of  the  third,  over  the  first, 
rather  than  in  any  complete  substitution  of  one  for 
another. 

The  magical  mode  of  thought  and  practice  is  the 
immediate  expression  of  man’s  need  and  desire  to 
control  the  forces  of  his  environment,  while  yet  he  knows 
nothing  of  their  nature.  At  this  stage  man  conceives 
all  things  to  be  capable  of  reciprocal  action,  but  as  to 
the  modes  of  their  interaction  he  has  but  the  vaguest 
and  most  inaccurate  notions.  Hence,  in  attempting  to 
control  these  forces,  he  adopts  whatever  procedure 
suggests  itself  in  virtue  of  the  natural  associative  con- 
junctions of  his  ideas  ; as  when  he  attempts  to  cause 
rain  by  sprinkling  water  on  the  ground  with  certain 
traditional  formalities,  to  raise  wind  by  whistling  or  by 
imitating  the  sound  of  it  with  the  bull-roarer,  to  bring 
disease  or  death  by  maltreating  an  effigy  of  his  enemy, 
to  cure  pain  and  disease  by  drawing  it  out  of  the  body 
in  the  form  of  a material  object  or  imaginary  entity. 

Though  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  such  practices  has 
rnajntained  itself  with  wonderful  persistency  through 


318  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

long  ages,  yet  the  lack  of  success  that  so  often  attends 
them  forbids  man  to  remain  for  ever  satisfied  with 
them,  or  to  feel  that  he  has  a power  of  control  over 
nature  adequate  to  his  needs.  Hence  his  imaginative 
faculty,  operating  under  the  impulse  of  curiosity  or 
wonder,  evolves  great  supernatural  powers  which  he 
regards  with  awe  and  submission.  Society  recognises 
these  powers,  and  a traditional  cult  of  them  grows  up, 
and  the  system  of  supernatural  explanation  of  natural 
events  enters  upon  its  long  period  of  dominance.  All 
the  unprogressive  societies  of  the  earth  remain  (as  so 
well  depicted  in  the  passage  quoted  in  the  footnote  of 
p.  316)  in  this  stage  in  which  theories  of  causation  are 
predominantly  supernatural  and  personal. 

But  in  most  societies  there  have  been,  throughout  the 
period  of  dominance  of  supernatural  explanations,  a 
certain  number  of  men  whose  curiosity  was  not  satis- 
fied by  the  current  systems.  They  have  maintained 
the  magical  attitude,  and,  impelled  by  curiosity,  have 
sought  to  increase  their  direct  influence  upon  natural 
forces  by  achieving  a better  understanding  of  them. 
These  are  the  wizards,  the  medicine-men,  the  alchemists 
and  astrologers,  the  independent  thinkers,  who  at  almost 
all  times  and  places  have  been  reprobated  and  perse- 
cuted by  the  official  representatives  of  the  supernatural 
cults.  In  most  of  the  societies  that  have  survived  in 
the  struggle  for  existence,  the  impulse  of  curiosity  has 
not  been  strong  enough  to  make  head  against  these 
repressive  measures.  For  the  strength  of  the  social 
sanctions,  derived  from  the  belief  in  the  supernatural 
powers  and  from  the  awe  and  reverence  excited  by  the 
ideas  of  these  powers,  was  a main  condition  of  the 
strength  and  stability  of  society ; and  no  society  has 
been  able  to  survive  in  any  severe  and  prolonged 
conflict  of  societies,  without  some  effective  system  of 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  RELIGION  319 


such  sanctions.  Hence  we  find  a survival  of  the 
primitive  predominance  of  the  magical  conception  of 
causation  only  among  peoples  such  as  the  natives  of 
iVustralia,  which,  owing  to  their  peculiar  geographical 
conditions,  have  never  been  subjected  to  any  severe 
process  of  group-selection.  While  all  societies  that 
have  made  any  considerable  progress  in  civilisation 
have  been  enabled  to  do  so  only  in  virtue  of  the 
stability  they  derived  from  their  system  of  super- 
natural sanctions. 

Hence  the  age-long,  inevitable,  and  radical  anta- 
gonism between  the  conservative  spirit  of  religion  and 
the  progressive  spirit  of  inquiry.  The  progress  of 
mankind  has  only  been  rendered  possible  by  their 
coexistence  and  conjoint  operation.  In  the  main, 
those  societies  which,  in  virtue  of  the  strength  and 
social  efficiency  of  their  system  of  supernatural  beliefs 
and  sanctions,  have  been  most  stable  and  capable  of 
enduring  have  been  least  tolerant  of  the  spirit  of 
inquiry,  and  therefore  least  progressive ; on  the  other 
hand,  the  flourishing  of  scepticism  has  been  too 
often  the  forerunner  of  social  decay,  as  in  ancient 
Greece  and  Rome.  Continued  progress  has  been 
rendered  possible  only  by  the  fact  that  the  gains 
achieved  by  the  spirit  of  inquiry  have  survived  the 
dissolution  of  the  societies  in  which  they  have  been 
achieved  (and  to  which  that  spirit  has  proved  fatal) 
through  becoming  imitatively  taken  up  into  the  culture 
of  societies  in  which  the  conservative  spirit  continued 
to  predominate. 

At  the  present  time  it  may  seem  that  in  one  small 
quarter  of  the  world,  namely,  Western  Europe,  society 
has  achieved  an  organisation  so  intrinsically  stable  that 
it  may  with  impunity  tolerate  the  flourishing  of  the  spirit 
of  inquiry  and  give  free  rein  to  the  impulse  of  curiosity. 


320 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


But  to  assume  that  this  is  the  case  would  be  rash.  The 
issue  remains  doubtful.  The  spirit  of  inquiry  has  broken 
all  its  bonds  and  soared  gloriously,  until  now  the 
conception  of  natural  causation  predominates  in  every 
field ; and,  if  the  notion  of  supernatural  powers  still 
persists  in  the  minds  of  men,  it  is  in  the  form  of  the 
conception  of  a Divine  Creator  who  maintains  the  laws 
that  He  has  made,  but  does  not  constantly  interfere 
with  their  operation.  This  change  of  belief,  this  with- 
drawal of  supernatural  power  from  immediate  interven- 
tion in  the  life  of  mankind,  inevitably  and  greatly 
diminishes  the  social  efficiency  of  the  supernatural 
sanctions.  Whether  our  societies  will  prove  capable  of 
long  surviving  this  process  is  the  most  momentous  of 
the  problems  confronting  Western  Civilisation.  The 
answer  to  it  is  a secret  hidden  in  the  bosom  of  the  future. 
If  they  shall  survive  the  change,  it  can  only  be  because 
the  impulse  of  curiosity,  carrying  forward  the  work  that 
it  has  so  splendidly  begun,  will  rapidly  increase  man's 
understanding  of,  and  control  over,  his  own  nature  and 
the  conditions  of  healthy  and  vigorous  social  life.* 

Of  the  instinct  of  self-display  little  need  be  said  in 
this  section.  Not  because  it  is  not  of  the  first  im- 
portance for  social  life,  but  because  what  was  said  of 
it  in  Section  I.  suffices  to  show  the  view  I take  of  its 
importance  and  how  it  becomes  incorporated  in  the  self- 
regarding  sentiment  and  plays  a part  in  all  true  volition. 
Here  I would  only  add  that  in  my  view  it  plays  a 
similarly  essential  part  in  all  true  collective  volition, 
being  incorporated  in  the  sentiment  for  the  family 
tribe,  or  nation,  or  other  social  aggregate  that  exerts 
such  volition.  But  the  discussion  and  illustration  of  the 

* See  the  conclusion  of  Mr.  A.  J.  Balfour’s  lecture  on  Deca- 
dence,” Cambridge,  190S, 


INSTINCTIVE  BASES  OF  RELIGION  321 


nature  of  collective  mental  processes  falls  outside  the 
plan  of  this  volume. 

Of  the  social  functions  of  the  instinct  of  submission 
something  has  been  said  in  Section  I.  and  in  the  fore- 
going pages  of  this  Section.  But  one  of  its  most 
important  social  operations  is  the  determination  of  the 
imitative,  suggestible  attitude  of  men  and  of  societies 
towards  one  another ; and  of  this  something  will  be 
said  in  the  last  chapter.^ 

* For  a fuller  discussion  of  the  religious  tendencies  of  primitive 
man,  the  reader  may  be  referred  to  Mr.  R.  R.  Marett’s  “ Thres- 
hold of  Religion’'  (London,  1909).  In  that  work  Mr.  Marett 
traces  back  the  evolution  of  religion  to  a preanimistic  stage, 
which  he  proposes  to  denote  by  the  word  animatism.”  It  will 
be  seen  that  my  own  brief  sketch  is  in  substantial  agreement 
with  his  view. 


i 


CHAPTER  XIV 


THE  INSTINCTS  OF  ACQUISITION  AND 
CONSTRUCTION 

HE  two  instincts  last  mentioned  in  Chapter  III., 


namely,  those  of  acquisitiveness  or  cupidity  and  of 
construction,  are  not  directly  social  in  their  operation, 
but  indirectly  they  exert  important  effects  in  the  life  of 
societies,  of  which  a few  words  may  be  said. 

The  importance  of  the  instinct  of  acquisition,  from 
our  present  point  of  view,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  it  must 
have  greatly  favoured,  if  it  was  not  an  essential  con- 
dition of,  that  accumulation  of  material  wealth  which 
was  necessary  for  the  progress  of  civilisation  beyond  its 
earliest  stages. 

There  are  still  in  existence  people  who  support  them- 
selves only  by  hunting  and  the  collection  of  wild  fruits, 
having  no  houses  or  fixed  places  of  abode,  nor  any 
possessions  beyond  what  they  carry  in  their  hands  from 
place  to  place.^  Among  them  this  instinct  would  seem 
to  be  deficient ; or  perhaps  it  is,  that  it  never  is  able  to 
determine  the  formation  of  a corresponding  habit  owing 
to  their  wandering  mode  of  life.  Among  pastoral 
nomads  the  working  of  the  instinct  is  manifested  in  the 
vast  herds  sometimes  accumulated  by  a single  patriarchal 

* One  of  the  most  interesting  of  such  peoples  are  the  Punans 
of  Borneo,  a remarkably  pleasing,  gentle-mannered,  handsome, 
and  fair-skinned  race  of  forest-dwellers. 


322 


ACQUISITION  AND  CONSTRUCTION  323 


family.^  But  it  was  only  when  agriculture  began  to  be 
extensively  practised  that  the  instinct  could  produce  its 
greatest  social  effects.  For  grain  of  all  sorts  lends  itself 
especially  well  to  hoarding  as  a form  of  wealth.  It  is 
compact  and  valuable  in  proportion  to  its  bulk,  can 
be  kept  for  long  periods  without  serious  deterioration, 
and  is  easily  stored,  divided,  and  transported.  Most 
of  the  civilisations  that  have  achieved  any  considerable 
development  have  been  based  on  the  accumulation  of 
stores  of  grain.  Besides  being  a very  important  form 
of  capital,  it  was  one  of  the  earliest  and  most  important 
objects  of  trade,  and  trade  must  always  have  exerted 
a socialising  influence. 

Although  in  highly  civilised  societies  the  motives 
that  lead  to  the  accumulation  of  capital  become  very 
complex,  yet  acquisitiveness,  the  desire  for  mere 
possession  of  goods,  remains  probably  the  most 
fundamental  of  them,  blending  and  co-operating  with 
all  other  motives ; this  impulse,  more  than  all  others, 
is  capable  of  obtaining  continuous  or  continually 
renewed  gratifications ; for  while,  in  the  course  of 
satisfaction  of  most  other  desires,  the  point  of  satiety 
is  soon  reached,  the  demands  of  this  one  grow  greater 
without  limit,  so  that  it  knows  no  satiety.  How  few 
men  are  content  with  the  possession  of  what  they  need 
for  the  satisfaction  of  all  other  desires  than  this  desire 
for  possession  for  its  own  sake  ! It  is  this  excess  of 
activity  beyond  that  required  for  the  satisfaction  of  all 
other  material  needs,  that  results  in  the  accumulation 
of  the  capital  which  is  a necessary  condition  of  the 
development  of  civilisation.  It  might  be  plausibly 
maintained  that  the  phenomena  with  which  economic 

‘ See  ''Comment  la  Route  cree  le  Type  social,”  by  M.  Ed. 
Demolins. 


324 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


science  is  concerned  are  in  the  main  the  outcome  of  the 
operation  of  this  instinct,  rather  than  of  the  enlightened 
self-interest  of  the  classical  economists. 

The  possession  and  acquisition  of  land  affords  satis- 
faction to  this  desire  in  a very  full  degree,  land  being 
a so  permanent  and  indestructible  form  of  property. 
And  this  instinct  has  played  its  part,  not  only  in  the 
building  up  of  large  private  estates — the  tendency  to  the 
indefinite  growth  of  which  everywhere  manifests  itself — 
but  also  in  the  causation  of  the  many  wars  that  have 
been  waged  for  the  possession  of  territories.  Wars  of 
this  type  are  characteristic  of  autocracies;  for  the 
desire  to  possess  is  more  effective  in  promoting  action 
when  the  thing  to  be  acquired  is  to  become  the 
possession  of  a single  individual,  than  if  it  is  to  be 
shared  by  all  the  members  of  a democratic  community. 
Accordingly,  one  of  the  most  striking  effects  of  the 
democratisation  of  States  is  the  passing  away  of  wars 
of  this  worst  type. 

The  principal  social  effects  of  the  instinct  of  construc- 
tion are  produced  by  the  necessity  for  co-operation  in 
works  of  construction  that  surpass  the  powers  of 
individuals,  especially  architectural  works.  Among 
all  peoples,  this  tendency  to  co-operation  in  large 
architectural  constructions,  huge  totem  poles,  monoliths, 
temples,  or  massive  tombs  like  the  pyramids  of  Egypt, 
shows  itself  as  soon  as  they  attain  a settled  mode  of 
life ; and  these  works  tend  to  confirm  them  in  the 
settled  mode  of  life,  and  to  strengthen  the  social  bonds. 


CHAPTER  XV 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT 

IN  Chapter  IV.  we  discussed  the  three  fundamental 
forms  of  mental  interaction — suggestion,  sym- 
pathy, and  imitation.  In  each  case,  we  said,  the 
process  of  interaction  results  in  the  assimilation  of 
the  mental  state  of  the  recipient  or  patient  to  that 
of  the  agent.  In  each  case  we  need  a pair  of  words 
to  denote  the  parts  of  the  agent  and  of  the  patient 
respectively.  “ Suggest  ” denotes  the  part  of  the 
agent  in  assimilating  the  cognitive  state  of  the  patient 
to  his  own  ; but  we  have  no  word  for  the  part  played 
by  the  patient  in  the  process,  unless  we  adopt  the  ugly 
expression — ‘^to  be  suggestioned.”  ‘‘Imitate’’  and 
“ sympathise  ” denote  the  part  of  the  patient  in  the 
process  of  assimilation  of  his  actions  and  of  his  affect- 
ive state  to  those  of  the  agent ; but  we  have  no  words 
denoting  the  part  of  the  agent  in  these  processes. 
Since  these  three  processes  co-operate  intimately  in 
social  life,  we  may  avoid  the  difficulty  arising  from  this 
lack  of  terms  by  following  M.  Tarde,i  who  extends  the 
meaning  of  the  word  “ imitation  ” to  cover  all  three 
processes  as  viewed  from  the  side  of  the  patient.  If 
we  do  that,  we  still  need  a correlative  word  to  denote 
all  three  processes  viewed  from  the  side  of  the  agent. 

* **  Les  Lois  de  ITmitation,*'  Paris,  1904,  and  “ Les  Lois 
Sociales,”  Paris,  1902. 


326 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


I propose  to  use  the  words  “ impress  ” and  “ impres- 
sion” in  this  sense.^  We  may  also  follow  M.  Tarde 
in  using  “contra-imitation”  to  denote  the  process  of 
contra-suggestion  viewed  from  the  side  of  the  patient. 

Impression  and  imitation  are,  then,  processes  of 
fundamental  importance  for  social  life.  M.  Tarde 
writes  : — “ Nous  dirons  done  . . . qu’une  socidt6  est 
un  groupe  de  gens  qui  prdsentent  entre  eux  beaucoup 
de  similitudes  produites  par  imitation  ou  par  contre- 
imitation”;^  and  in  thus  making  imitation  the  very 
essence  of  social  life  he  hardly  exaggerates  its  import- 
ance. In  Section  I.  we  have  considered  some  of  the 
ways  in  which  imitation  moulds  the  growing  individual 
and  assimilates  him  to  the  type  of  the  society  into 
which  he  is  born.  In  this  Section  we  must  consider  the 
results  of  imitation  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  society 
as  a whole  rather  than  from  that  of  the  development 
of  the  individual. 

Imitation  is  the  prime  condition  of  all  collective 
mental  life.  I propose  to  reserve  for  another  volume 
the  detailed  study  of  collective  mental  processes.  Here 
I would  dismiss  the  subject  by  merely  pointing  out 
that  when  men  think,  feel,  and  act  as  members  of  a 
group  of  any  kind — whether  a mere  mob,  a committee, 
a political  or  religious  association,  a city,  a nation, 
or  any  other  social  aggregate — their  collective  actions 
show  that  the  mental  processes  of  each  man  have 
been  profoundly  modified  in  virtue  of  the  fact  that 
he  thought,  felt,  and  acted  as  one  of  a group  and  in 
reciprocal  mental  action  with  the  other  members  of 
the  group  and  with  the  group  as  a whole.  In  the 
simpler  forms  of  social  grouping,  imitation  (taken  in 
the  wide  sense  defined  above)  is  the  principal  condition 

* Following  in  this  respect  Professor  Giddings. 

* " Les  Lois  de  rimitation,”  p.  xii. 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  327 


of  this  profound  alteration  of  the  individual's  mental 
processes.  And,  even  in  the  most  developed  forms  of 
social  aggregation,  it  plays  a fundamental  part  (although 
greatly  complicated  by  other  factors)  in  rendering  pos- 
sible the  existence  and  operation  of  the  collective  mind, 
its  collective  deliberation,  emotion,  character,  and  volition. 

Without  entering  further  into  the  discussion  of  the 
conditions,  nature,  and  operations  of  the  collective  mind, 
we  may  note  some  of  the  principal  points  of  interest 
presented  by  imitation  as  a social  factor. 

the  development  of  individual  human  beings, 
imitation,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  great  agency  through 
which  the  child  is  led  on  from  the  life  of  mere  animal 
impulse  to  the  life  of  self-control,  deliberation,  and 
true  volition.  And  it  has  played  a similar  part  in  the 
development  of  the  human  race  and  of  human  society. 

The  mental  constitution  of  man  differs  from  that 
of  the  highest  animals  chiefly  in  that  man  has  an 
indefinitely  greater  power  of  learning,  of  profiting  by 
experience,  of  acquiring  new  modes  of  reaction  and 
adjustment  to  an  immense  variety  of  situations.  This 
superiority  of  man  would  seem  to  be  due  in  the  main 
to  his  possession  of  a very  large  brain,  containing  a 
mass  of  plastic  nervous  tissue  which  exceeds  in  bulk 
the  sum  of  the  innately  organised  parts  and  makes  up 
the  principal  part  of  the  substance  of  the  cerebral 
hemispheres.  This  great  brain,  and  the  immense 
capacity  for  mental  adaptation  and  acquisition  implied 
by  it,  must  have  been  evolved  hand  in  hand  with  the 
development  of  man's  social  life  and  with  that  of 
language,  the  great  agent  and  promoter  of  social  life. 
For  to  an  individual  living  apart  from  any  human 
society  the  greater  part  of  this  brain  and  of  this 
capacity  for  acquisition  would  be  useless  and  would  lie 
dormant  for  lack  of  any  store  of  knowledge,  belief,  and 


328 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


custom  to  be  acquired  or  assimilated.  Whereas  animal 
species  have  advanced  from  lower  to  higher  levels  of 
mental  life  by  the  improvement  of  the  innate  mental 
constitution  of  the  species,  man,  since  he  became  man, 
has  progressed  in  the  main  by  means  of  the  increase 
in  volume  and  improvement  in  quality  of  the  sum 
of  knowledge,  belief,  and  custom,  which  constitutes 
the  tradition  of  any  society.  And  it  is  to  the 
superiority  of  the  moral  and  intellectual  tradition  of 
his  society  that  the  superiority  of  civilised  man  over 
existing  savages  and  over  his  savage  forefathers  is 
chiefly,  if  not  wholly,  due.  This  increase  and  improve- 
ment of  tradition  has  been  effected  by  countless  steps, 
each  relatively  small  and  unimportant,  initiated  by  the 
few  original  minds  of  the  successive  generations  and 
incorporated  in  the  social  tradition  through  the  accept- 
ance or  imitation  of  them  by  the  mass  of  men.  All  that 
constitutes  culture  and  civilisation,  all,  or  nearly  all, 
that  distinguishes  the  highly  cultured  European  intel- 
lectually and  morally  from  the  men  of  the  stone  age  of 
Europe,  is  then  summed  up  in  the  word  “tradition,” 
and  all  tradition  exists  only  in  virtue  of  imitation ; 
for  it  is  only  by  imitation  that  each  generation  takes 
up  and  makes  its  own  the  tradition  of  the  preceding 
generation ; and  it  is  only  by  imitation  that  any 
improvement,  conceived  by  any  mind  endowed  with 
that  rarest  of  all  things,  a spark  of  originality,  can 
become  embodied  within  the  tradition  of  his  society. 

Imitation  is,  then  not  only  the  great  conservative 
force  of  society,  it  is  also  essential  to  all  social  progress. 
We  may  briefly  glance  at  its  social  operations,  under 
these  two  heads.* 

* The  following  summary  account  of  the  social  operations  of 
imitation  is  in  large  part  extracted  from  M.  Tarde's  well-known 
treatise,  “Les  Lois  de  T Imitation.’' 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  329 


Imitation  as  a Conservative  Agency 

The  similarities  obtaining  between  the  individuals  of 
any  one  country,  any  one  county,  social  class,  school, 
university,  profession,  or  community  of  any  kind,  and 
distinguishing  them  from  the  members  of  any  other  similar 
community,  are  in  the  main  due  to  the  more  intimate 
intercourse  with  one  another  of  the  members  of  the 
one  community,  to  their  consequent  imitation  of  one 
another,  and  to  their  acceptance  by  imitation  of 
the  same  tradition.  Under  this  head  fall  similarities 
of  language,  of  religious,  political,  and  moral  con- 
victions, habits  of  dressing,  eating,  dwelling,  and  of 
recreation,  all  those  routine  activities  which  make  up 
by  far  the  greater  part  of  the  lives  of  men.^ 

There  is  widely  current  a vague  belief  that  the 
national  characteristics  of  the  people  of  any  country 
are  in  the  main  innate  characters.  But  there  can  be 
no  serious  question  that  this  popular  assumption  is 
erroneous  and  that  national  characteristics,  at  any  rate 
all  those  that  distinguish  the  peoples  of  the  European 
countries,  are  in  the  main  the  expressions  of  different 
traditions.  There  are  innate  differences  of  mental 
constitution  between  the  races  and  sub-races  of  men 

* The  last  century  has  seen  a great  change  in  respect  to  the 
force  with  which  his  immediate  social  environment  bears  upon 
the  individual ; but,  that  the  form  of  each  man’s  religious  belief 
is  determined  for  him  by  the  tradition  of  his  society,  was  strictly 
true  almost  without  exception  in  all  earlier  ages,  and  still  remains 
true  as  regards  the  mass  of  men.  There  has  been  a similar 
weakening  as  regards  the  influence  of  political  tradition,  but 
still  it  is  roughly  true  that  every  little  boy  and  girl  that’s  born 
into  this  world  alive  is  either  a little  liberal  or  else  a little 
conservative,’'  and  for  the  most  part  continues  so  throughout 
life. 


330 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


and  between  the  peoples  of  the  European  countries ; 
and  these  innate  peculiarities  are  very  important, 
because  they  exert  through  long  periods  of  time  a 
constant  bias  or  moulding  influence  upon  the  growth  of 
national  cultures  and  traditions.  But,  relatively  to 
the  national  peculiarities  acquired  by  each  individual 
in  virtue  of  his  participation  in  the  traditions  of  his 
country,  the  innate  peculiarities  are  slight  and  are 
almost  completely  obscured  in  each  individual  by 
these  superimposed  acquired  characters.  If  the  reader 
is  inclined  to  doubt  the  truth  of  these  statements,  let 
him  make  an  effort  of  imagination  and  suppose  that 
throughout  a period  of  half  a century  every  child  born 
to  English  parents  was  at  once  exchanged  (by  the 
power  of  a magician’s  wand)  for  an  infant  of  the  French, 
or  other  European,  nation.  Soon  after  the  close  of 
this  period  the  English  nation  would  be  composed  of 
individuals  of  French  extraction,  and  the  French  nation 
of  individuals  of  English  extraction.  It  is,  I think, 
clear  that,  in  spite  of  this  complete  exchange  of  innate 
characters  between  the  two  nations,  there  would  be 
but  little  immediate  change  of  national  characteristics. 
The  French  people  would  still  speak  French,  and  the 
English  would  speak  English,  with  all  the  local  diversi- 
ties to  which  we  are  accustomed  and  without  perceptible 
change  of  pronunciation.  The  religion  of  the  French 
would  still  be  predominantly  Roman  Catholic,  and  the 
English  people  would  still  present  the  same  diversity 
of  Protestant  creeds.  The  course  of  political  institu- 
tions would  have  suffered  no  profound  change,  the 
customs  and  habits  of  the  two  peoples  would  exhibit 
only  such  changes  as  might  be  attributed  to  the  lapse 
of  time,  though  an  acute  observer  might  notice  an 
appreciable  approximation  of  the  two  peoples  towards 
one  another  in  all  these  respects.  The  inhabitant  of 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  331 


France  would  still  be  a Frenchman  and  the  inhabitant  of 
England  an  Englishman  to  all  outward  seeming,  save 
that  the  physical  appearance  of  the  two  peoples  would 
be  transposed.  And  we  may  go  even  further  and  assert 
that  the  same  would  hold  good  if  a similar  exchange 
of  infants  were  effected  between  the  English  and  any 
other  less  closely  allied  nation,  say  the  Turks  or  the 
Japanese. 

The  dominance  of  the  traditional  characters,  acquired 
by  each  generation  through  imitation,  over  innate 
characters  holds  good  not  only  in  respect  to  the 
characters  mentioned  above,  but  also,  though  perhaps 
in  a smaller  degree,  in  respect  to  those  modes  of 
activity  which  are  regarded  as  essentially  the  expres- 
sions of  individuality,  namely,  the  various  forms  of  art- 
production,  of  science,  of  literature,  of  conversation. 
The  immensely  increased  intercourse  of  peoples  cha- 
racteristic of  the  present  age  has  already  done  much 
to  obscure  these  national  differences  and  peculiarities, 
but  we  have  only  to  go  back  to  earlier  ages  to  see 
that  the  force  of  imitation  is  in  these  fields  of  human 
activity,  as  well  as  in  all  others,  immensely  greater  than 
the  force  of  individuality  or  of  innate  peculiarities. 
For,  the  further  back  we  go  in  time  and  in  cultural 
level,  the  more  strictly  and  locally  peculiar  does  each 
kind  of  cultural  element  appear.  So  persistent  are 
such  traditional  peculiarities  that  archaeologists  and 
anthropologists  confidently  trace  the  distribution  and 
affinities  of  extinct  peoples  and  races  throughout  great 
periods  of  time  and  large  areas  by  noting  peculiarities 
of  modes  of  sepulture,  of  carving,  of  building,  of  the 
shape,  size,  or  ornamentation  of  pottery,  of  weapons, 
or  of  any  other  durable  manufactured  article,  or  even 
slight  peculiarities  in  the  mode  of  laying  stones 
together  to  form  a building  of  any  kind. 


332 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


It  is  a general  law  of  imitation  that  modes  of  doing 
persist  more  obstinately  than  modes  of  thinking  and 
feeling.  Hence  the  many  remarkable  instances  of  sur- 
vival of  former  stages  of  culture  generally  take  the 
form  of  practices  whose  meanings  and  original  purposes 
have  been  long  forgotten  or  completely  transformed. 
One  of  the  most  interesting  examples  of  such  vestigial 
remnants  of  an  earlier  culture  is  the  survival  of  the 
forms  of  marriage  by  capture  among  the  peasantry  of 
various  European  countries  up  to,  or  nearly  up  to,  the 
present  time ; and,  in  fact,  the  practice  of  throwing  rice 
and  old  shoes  after  the  departing  bridegroom,  which  is 
still  observed  among  us,  is  probably  the  last  surviving 
remnant  of  the  forms  of  marriage  by  capture.  In  some 
parts  of  Europe  there  survives  a vestige  of  another 
form  of  marriage,  namely,  marriage  by  purchase — the 
bridegroom  gives  to  the  parents  of  his  bride  a few 
grains  of  corn  ; and  it  is  the  more  striking  that  the  old 
practice  persists  in  the  shape  of  this  formal  act,  where 
the  actual  spirit  of  the  transaction  has  been  transformed 
into  its  opposite,  and  the  bride  is  expected  to  bring  to 
her  husband,  or  to  buy  him  with,  a substantial  dowry. 
In  a similar  way  nearly  all  our  old-fashioned  village 
festivals  are  survivals  of  the  practices,  the  pagan  rites 
and  ceremonies,  by  means  of  which  our  ancestors  pro- 
pitiated and  honoured  the  various  powers  or  divinities 
whom  they  conceived  to  preside  over  the  processes  of 
nature  that  most  nearly  affected  their  welfare.  The 
May-day  festival,  for  example,  is  probably  a survival 
from  the  rites  by  means  of  which  some  god  or  god- 
dess of  vegetation  was  worshipped  and  propitiated ; 
and  many  other  instances  might  be  cited.^  At  the 
present  time  the  transformation  of  such  religious 
rites  into  mere  holiday  festivals  may  be  observed  in 
‘ C/.  especially  Professor  J«  G.  Frazer’s  “ Golden  Bough,” 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  333 


actual  and  rapid  progress  in  various  odd  corners  of 
the  world.i 

This  tendency  of  practices  to  survive  by  continued 
imitation,  long  after  their  original  significance  has  been 
forgotten,  has  had  far  more  important  effects  than  that  of 
preserving  vestiges  as  curiosities  for  the  anthropologists. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  practices  so  surviving  the 
memory  of  their  significance  have  in  many  cases  been 
interpreted  and  been  given  a new  meaning  by  the  genera- 
tions that  found  themselves  performing  them  in  blind 
obedience  to  tradition  ; although,  from  the  nature  of  the 
case,  it  can  seldom  be  possible  to  attain  more  than  a 
speculative  probability  in  regard  to  such  transforma- 
tions and  developments.  As  an  example  of  processes 
of  this  kind,  we  may  note  Robertson  Smith’s  specula- 
tion to  the  effect  that  the  ever-burning  altar  fire,  which 
became  among  so  many  peoples  a symbol  and  a condi- 
tion of  the  life  and  prosperity  of  a people  or  a city,  was 
a re-interpreted  survival  of  the  fire  which  originally  was 
used  to  consume  the  parts  of  the  sacrificial  victim  too 
holy  to  be  otherwise  disposed  of.^  And  of  many  of  the 
symbolical  rites  of  the  higher  religions  it  has  been 
shown  that  they  may  with  some  plausibility  be  regarded 
as  re-interpreted  survivals  of  older  rituals. 

Dr.  A.  Beck  3 goes  further,  and  argues  forcibly  that 
all,  or  most,  myths  and  dogmas,  and,  in  fact,  all  religious 
conceptions  of  the  lower  cultures,  were  arrived  at  by 
this  process  of  re-interpretation  of  survivals  of  practices 
once  of  practical  utility. 

* The  process  was  going  on  rapidly  in  the  islands  of  the 
Torres  Straits  at  the  time  I spent  some  months  there  ten  years 
ago.  The  natives  had  been  converted  to  Christianity  (nominally, 
at  least)  some  twenty  years  before  the  date  of  my  visit. 

® Religion  of  the  Semites." 

• « Die  Nachahmung,"  Leipzig,  1903. 


334  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 

Among  some  peoples  the  conservative  power  of 
imitation  is,  of  course,  displayed  much  more  strongly 
than  among  others.  The  force  of  custom  is  generally 
supreme  among  peoples  at  a low  level  of  culture. 
Among  them  the  sufficient  justification  and  supreme 
sanction  of  all  action  is  custom.  And,  even  after  a 
people  has  made  considerable  progress  in  the  scale  of 
civilisation,  it  is  always  liable  to  become  fixed  and 
stationary  once  more  under  the  supremacy  of  tradition  ; 
then  no  innovation,  no  invention  made  within  the 
nation,  no  ideas  coming  from  outside  it,  can  obtain  a 
foothold  or  find  general  acceptance  within  it,  because 
no  individual  and  no  other  people  has  in  the  eyes  of 
that  people  a prestige  that  can  rival  the  prestige  of  its 
own  past  and  of  the  great  men  of  its  own  past  history. 
A society,  arrived  at  a fair  level  of  civilisation  and 
sufficiently  strongly  organised  to  resist  violent  attacks 
from  without,  may  persist  through  long  ages  almost 
unchanged,  as  we  see  in  the  case  of  the  Chinese  people. 
Then,  with  every  generation  that  passes  away,  the  pres- 
tige of  the  past  becomes  greater,  because  it  becomes 
more  deeply  shrouded  in  the  mists  and  the  mystery  of 
age;  and  so  the  cake  of  custom  becomes  ever  harder 
and  more  unbreakable. 

Imitation  as  an  Agent  of  Progress 

If  imitation,  maintaining  customs  and  traditions  of 
every  kind,  is  the  great  conservative  agency  in  the  life 
of  societies,  it  plays  also  a great  and  essential  part  in 
bringing  about  the  progress  of  civilisation.  Its  opera- 
tion as  a factor  in  progress  is  of  two  principal  kinds : 
(i)  the  spread  by  imitation  throughout  a people  of 
ideas  and  practices  generated  within  it  from  time  to  time 
by  its  exceptionally  gifted  members ; (2)  the  spread  by 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  335 


imitation  of  ideas  and  practices  from  one  people  to 
another.  There  are  certain  features  or  laws  of  the 
spreading  by  imitation  that  are  common  to  these  two 
forms  of  the  process. 

The  spread  of  any  culture  element,  a belief,  an  art,  a 
convention,  a sentiment,  a habit  or  attitude  of  mind  of 
any  kind,  tends  to  proceed  in  geometrical  progression, 
because  each  individual  or  body  of  individuals  that 
imitates  the  new  idea  and  embodies  it  in  practice 
becomes  an  additional  centre  of  radiation  of  that  idea 
to  all  individuals  and  groups  that  come  in  contact  with 
it ; and  also  because,  with  each  step  of  the  spread  of 
the  idea  over  a wider  area  and  to  larger  numbers  of 
persons,  the  power  of  mass-suggestion  grows  in  virtue 
of  mere  numbers. 

The  rapidity  of  the  spreading  of  a culture-element  by 
imitation  among  any  people  depends  in  great  measure 
upon  two  conditions  : first,  the  density  of  population  ; 
secondly,  the  degree  of  development  of  means  of  com- 
munication and  the  degree  of  use  made  of  these  means. 
These  propositions  are  so  obviously  true  that  we  need 
not  dwell  upon  them.  We  have  only  to  look  around 
us  to  see  how,  in  our  own  country  at  the  present  time, 
the  rapid  development  of  the  means  of  communication 
during  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  has 
so  facilitated  spread  by  imitation  among  our  dense 
population  as  to  bring  about  a very  high  degree 
of  uniformity  in  many  respects.  Local  dialects  are 
rapidly  passing  away,  and  local  peculiarities  of  dress 
and  social  convention  have  already  been  almost  oblite- 
rated, while  local  sports,  such  as  golf,  have  spread  in  a 
few  years  throughout  the  country.  The  rate  of  spread- 
ing of  trivial  passing  fashions  is  marvellous — a new  way 
of  shaking  hands,  the  fashion  of  dropping  the  g and 
saying  “Good  morning”  the  shape  and  size  of  ladies’ 


336 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


hats  or  a style  of  wearing  the  hair,  such  games  as 
ping-pong  and  diabolo — all  these  and  a hundred  other 
fashions  suddenly  and  mysteriously  appear  and,  having 
in  a few  months  ravaged  the  whole  country  like  deadly 
pestilences,  disappear  as  suddenly  as  they  came.  In 
almost  all  such  cases  imitation  and  contra-imitation 
work  strongly  together  ; each  victim  is  moved  not  only 
by  the  prestige  of  those  whom  he  imitates,  but  also 
by  the  desire  to  be  different  from  the  mass  who  have 
not  yet  adopted  the  fashion.  And  it  is  owing  to  this 
strong  element  of  contra-imitation  that  these  trivial 
fashions  are  usually  so  fleeting;  for,  as  soon  as  the 
fashion  has  spread  to  a certain  proportion  of  the  total 
population,  the  operation  of  contra-imitation  is  reversed 
and  begins  to  make  for  the  abolition  of  the  fashion  and 
its  supplanting  by  some  other — the  mistress  cannot 
possibly  continue  to  wear  the  new  shape  of  hat,  how- 
ever becoming  to  her,  because  her  maids  and  her 
humbler  neighbours  have  begun  to  imitate  it. 

These  trivial  fashions  generally  pass  away  com- 
pletely. But  all  new  ideas  that  spread  by  imitation 
must  first  become  fashions,  before  they  can  become 
embodied  in  tradition  as  customs ; and  the  easy 
catching-on  and  rapid  spread  of  new  fashions  are  sure 
indications  that  the  culture  of  a people  is  mobile  and 
plastic,  that  it  is  ready  and  likely  to  embody  new 
features  in  its  customs,  beliefs,  and  institutions,  and  so 
to  undergo  change ; though  such  change  is  not  neces- 
sarily or  always  progress  towards  a better  state  of 
civilisation  or  of  social  organisation. 

Imitation  modifies  a people’s  civilisation  in  one  of 
two  ways — by  substitution  or  by  accumulation  ; that  is 
to  say,  the  new  culture-element,  spreading  by  imitation 
among  a people,  either  conflicts  with,  drives  out,  and 
supplants  some  older  traditional  element,  or  constitutes 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  337 


an  extension,  complication,  and  enrichment  of  the 
existing  tradition.  Thus  a language  or  a religious 
system  may  be  imitated  by  one  people  from  another, 
and  may  completely  supplant  the  indigenous  language 
or  religion.  But  more  commonly  it  becomes  worked 
up  with  the  indigenous  language,  or  religion,  enriching 
it  and  rendering  it  more  complex  and  more  adequate 
to  the  needs  of  the  people ; as  when,  for  example,  the 
Norman-French  language  was  largely  imitated  by  the 
English  people,  and  so  became  in  large  part  incorpo- 
rated in  the  English  language ; or  as  when  the  religion 
of  Buddha  was  adopted  by  the  Japanese  people,  partially 
fusing  with,  rather  than  supplanting,  their  national 
Shinto  religion  of  ancestor-worship. 

An  idea  or  practice  that  has  once  begun  to  be 
imitated  by  a people  tends  to  spread  to  the  maximum 
extent  possible  under  the  given  conditions  of  society ; 
and  then  the  custom  or  institution  in  which  it  has 
become  embodied  tends  to  persist  indefinitely  with  this 
maximum  degree  of  intensity  and  diffusion ; and  it 
only  recedes  or  disappears  under  the  influence  of  some 
newly  introduced  antagonistic  rival.  In  illustration  of 
this  law  we  may  cite  tea-drinking,  tobacco-smoking,  or 
lawn  tennis.  It  is  when  imitation  of  any  idea  has 
reached  this  saturation  point  or  degree  of  maximum 
diffusion,  that  the  statistician  shows  numerically  the 
constancy  of  the  occurrence  of  its  external  manifesta- 
tions, and  cites  his  figures  to  prove  that  the  actions  of 
man  are  as  completely  determined  and  as  predictable 
as  the  motions  of  the  heavenly  bodies. 

The  imitation  of  peoples  follows  the  fundamental 
law  of  all  imitation — the  law,  namely,  that  the  source 
from  which  the  impression  comes  is  one  enjoying  pres- 
tige, is  an  individual  or  collective  personality  that  is 
stronger,  more  complex,  or  more  highly  developed,  and 
z 


338 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


therefore  to  some  extent  mysterious,  not  completely 
ejective,  to  the  imitators.  Whether  the  ideas  of  an 
individual  shall  be  accepted  by  his  fellow-countrymen 
depends  not  so  much  upon  the  nature  of  those  ideas  as 
upon  the  degree  of  prestige  which  that  individual  has 
or  can  secure.  The  founders  of  new  religions  have 
always  secured  prestige,  partly  by  their  personal 
force  and  character,  partly  by  acquiring  a reputation 
for  supernatural  powers  by  means  of  falling  occasionally 
into  trance  or  ecstasy,  or  by  the  working  of  miracles,  or 
in  virtue  of  a reputed  miraculous  origin,  or  by  all  of 
these  together.  A great  general,  having  secured  pres- 
tige by  his  military  exploits,  may  then,  like  the  first 
Napoleon,  impress  his  ideas  of  social  organisation  upon 
a whole  people.  A statesman,  having  secured  prestige 
by  his  eloquence  and  parliamentary  skill,  can  then  set 
the  tone  of  political  life,  and,  under  the  two-party 
system,  can  make  approximately  one  half  of  the  people 
of  his  country  accept  his  ideas  almost  without  question. 
Of  this,  two  very  striking  illustrations  have  recently 
been  afforded  by  English  political  changes — the  accept- 
ance of  Gladstone’s  Home  Rule  ” idea  and  of  Mr. 
Chamberlain’s  idea  of  Protection.  If  the  latter  idea 
should  become  generally  accepted,  it  will  be  a most 
striking  instance  of  social  imitation  on  a great  scale. 
Ten  years  ago  the  dogma  of  Free  Trade  was  universally 
accepted  in  this  country,  save  by  a few  sceptics,  who  for 
lack  of  prestige  could  get  no  hearing  ; yet  now  half,  or 
nearly  half,  the  country  clamours  for  Protection.  And 
this  great  change  is  almost  entirely  due  to  the  influence 
of  one  self-reliant  man  of  established  prestige. 

But  originality  is  a very  rare  quality,  and  still  more 
rarely  is  it  combined  with  the  moral  and  physical  and 
social  advantages  necessary  for  the  acquisition  of  high 
prestige;  hence,  if  the  progress  of  each  nation  took 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  339 


place  only  by  the  acceptance  of  the  ideas  of  its  own 
great  men,  progress  would  have  been  very  much  slower 
than  it  actually  has  been. 

The  imitation  of  one  people  by  another  has  been  a 
principal  condition  of  the  progress  of  civilisation  in 
all  its  stages,  but  more  especially  in  its  later  stages. 
The  people  that  is  imitated  by  another  is  always  one 
of  more  highly  evolved  civilisation  or  of  greater  skill 
and  power  in  the  use  of  the  particular  idea  or  institution 
that  is  imitated.  The  most  striking  example  of  this 
process  afforded  by  history  is  the  imitation  of  the 
Romans  by  the  peoples  of  Western  Europe  whom 
they  conquered,  and,  at  a later  period,  by  the  peoples 
by  whom  they  were  conquered.  The  immense  prestige 
of  the  Romans  enabled  them  to  continue  to  impress 
their  language,  their  religion,  their  laws,  their  archi- 
tecture, and  all  the  principal  features  of  their  material 
civilisation  upon  these  peoples,  even  when  their  military 
power  had  declined.  On  the  other  hand,  although  the 
Romans  conquered  the  Grecian  world,  they  were  not 
imitated  by  it ; but  rather  themselves  became  the 
imitators  in  respect  to  most  of  the  higher  elements  of 
culture;  for  the  prestige  of  Greece  in  respect  to  all  forms 
of  art  and  literature  was  greater  than  that  of  Rome. 

The  imitation  of  Western  Europe  by  Japan  is,  of 
course,  the  most  striking  instance  of  modern  times. 
And  this  case  is  unique  in  that  the  imitation  is  in 
the  main  self-conscious  and  deliberate,  whereas  in  all 
former  ages  national  imitation  has  been  largely  of 
lower  forms.  For  in  national  as  in  individual  imitation 
we  have  to  recognise  very  different  modes  of  imitation, 
ranging  from  the  immediate  unreflecting  acceptance  of 
a mode  of  thought  or  action  to  its  adoption  by  an 
organised  national  effort  of  collective  volition  after 
careful  deliberation. 


340 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


Perhaps  the  great  influence  of  national  imitation  on 
the  progress  of  civilisation  is  illustrated  most  clearly 
by  the  study  of  national  arts,  especially  of  architecture. 
The  distinctive  forms  of  art  of  each  nation  can,  almost 
without  exception,  be  traced  back  to  two  or  more 
ancestral  sources,  from  the  blending  and  adaptation 
of  which  the  new  national  art  has  resulted.  The 
work  of  archaeologists  largely  consists  in  tracing 
these  streams  of  influence  and  the  results  of  their 
blendings. 

The  further  back  we  go  towards  periods  of  simpler 
civilisation,  the  more  striking  becomes  the  evidence 
of  diffusion  of  ideas  by  imitation.  For,  in  the  simpler 
civilisations  of  past  ages,  ideas  were  fewer  and,  there- 
fore, of  greater  individual  importance.  We  find,  for 
example,  evidence  of  the  almost  world-wide  diffusion 
of  certain  myths — of  which  a notable  example  has  been 
worked  out  in  detail  by  Mr.  Hartland  in  his  “ Legend  of 
Perseus.”  And  this  wide  diffusion  of  myths  constitutes, 
perhaps,  the  most  striking  illustration  of  imitation  on  a 
great  scale,  because  in  this  case  the  operation  of  imita- 
tion is  not  complicated  by  any  material,  or  other  definite 
social,  advantages  or  disadvantages  resulting  from  or 
accompanying  it  on  the  part  of  the  imitated  or  of 
the  imitating  people. 

The  same  is,  perhaps,  less  strictly  true  of  such 
customs  as  peculiar  modes  of  sepulture,  burning 
or  mound-burial.  But  the  process  of  imitation  has 
achieved  its  most  important  results  in  the  case  of  the 
great  discoveries  that  have  increased  man's  power  over 
nature  and  constituted  essential  steps  in  the  evolution 
of  civilisation — agriculture,  the  domestication  of  animals, 
the  use  of  the  arch  and  dome  in  building,  of  the  bow 
and  of  gunpowder  in  warfare,  of  the  wheel  in  locomo- 
tion, the  art  of  printing,  of  glass-making,  the  application 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  341 


of  steam  as  a substitute  for  other  forms  of  power ; each 
of  these  has  been  discovered  in  some  one  or  two  places 
only,  has  been  first  applied  among  some  one  or  two 
peoples  only,  and  has  been  diffused  by  imitation 
throughout  the  world. 

Our  present  civilisation — so  rich  and  complex  in 
language,  in  laws,  in  science  and  art,  in  literature, 
in  institutions  and  material  resources — is,  then,  the 
outcome,  not  of  the  original  discoveries  and  ideas  of 
men  of  our  own  race,  or  of  any  one  people,  but  of 
the  peoples  of  the  whole  world.  No  one  of  the 
leading  European  nations  has  created  its  own  civili- 
sation, but  each  one  has  rather  appropriated  the  various 
elements  of  its  culture  from  all  the  peoples  of  the  earth, 
adapting  them  and  combining  them  to  meet  its  special 
needs,  and  itself  contributing  a small  though  important 
part  to  the  whole. 

There  is  one  rule  or  law  which,  as  M.  Tarde  has 
pointed  out,  holds  good  of  international  collective 
imitation,  but  not  of  individual  imitation.  It  is  that, 
as  Tarde  expresses  it,  such  imitation  proceeds  from 
within  outwards ; that  is  to  say,  the  ideas  and  senti- 
ments of  a people  are  first  imitated  by  another,  and,  not 
until  they  have  become  widely  spread  and  established, 
are  the  forms  in  which  they  are  externalised,  or  ex- 
pressed and  embodied,  imitated  also.  Thus,  in  the 
greater  instances  of  national  imitation,  for  example, 
the  imitation  of  British  parliamentary  institutions  by 
other  nations,  there  occurs  first  a period  during  which 
the  ideas  and  sentiments  underlying  them  are  imitated  ; 
and  it  is  not  until  this  assimilation  of  ideas  has  passed 
beyond  the  stage  of  fashion  and  they  have  become  a 
part  of  the  national  tradition,  that  effective  imitation  of 
the  institutions  themselves  is  possible.  If  such  institu- 
tions are  imposed  upon  a people  by  authority  before 


342 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


this  stage  of  assimilation  has  been  reached,  the  institu- 
tions will  be  liable  to  break  down  hopelessly.  Hence 
the  failure  of  parliamentary  government  in  various 
South  American  republics,  and  in  Russia,  and  its 
inevitable  failure  in  the  Philippine  Islands  if  intro- 
duced there  by  the  authority  of  the  American  people. 
It  is  in  accordance  with  this  law  that  among  civilised 
peoples  the  study  of  foreign  literature,  in  which  the 
ideas  of  other  peoples  are  conveyed  most  clearly  and 
in  the  most  diffusible  form,  usually  prepares  the  way 
for  imitation  of  institutions,  arts,  laws,  and  customs. 
Thus  the  Renaissance  of  Western  Europe  was  prepared 
for  by  the  study  of  Hellenic  literature,  and  the  spread 
of  British  political  institutions  was  preceded  by  the 
study  of  the  writings  of  our  political  philosophers,  from 
Hobbes  and  Locke  to  Adam  Smith,  Bentham,  and  Mill. 

Within  any  nation  imitation  tends  always  to  spread 
from  upper  to  lower  classes,  rather  than  in  the  reverse 
direction.  This  is  due  to  the  fundamental  law  of 
imitation,  namely,  that  prestige  is  the  principal  con- 
dition that  enables  one  person  or  group  to  impress 
others.  And  in  international  imitation  this  spreading 
from  above  downwards  through  the  social  strata  is 
especially  clearly  manifested ; for  it  is  usually  by  the 
upper  classes,  or  by  sections  of  them,  that  imitations 
of  foreign  ideas  and  customs  are  originally  made,  the 
further  spread  of  the  foreign  elements  then  proceeding 
by  class-imitation.  In  this  way  aristocracies  of  many 
nations  have  performed  valuable  services  for  which  they 
have  not  usually  been  given  due  credit.  In  all  earlier 
ages  royal  courts  have  served  as  centres  for  the  recep- 
tion and  diffusion  of  foreign  ideas.  Owing  to  the 
greater  freedom  of  communication  between  courts  than 
between  other  parts  of  nations,  foreign  ideas  were  more 
readily  introduced  and  assimilated  by  the  members  of 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  343 


a court,  and  from  them  were  transmitted  to  the  rest 
of  the  nation  ; whereby  its  life  was  enriched  and  its 
civilisation  advanced.  In  this  way,  for  example,  the 
court  of  Frederick  the  Great  introduced  French  culture 
to  a relatively  backward  Prussia. 

In  recent  times  royal  courts  and  hereditary  aristocra- 
cies have  been  to  a great  extent  superseded  in  these 
functions  by  the  great  capitals,  which  are  in  a sense 
their  offspring.  Thus  Paris  has  succeeded  to  the 
French  court  as  the  centre  of  assimilation  and  diffu- 
sion of  foreign  ideas,  and  its  immense  prestige  enables 
it  to  impress  its  ideas  upon  the  whole  of  France.  The 
aristocracy  of  intellect,  which  in  former  ages  was  usually 
an  appanage  of  the  courts  and  now  is  generally  gathered 
in  the  capitals,  plays  an  important  part  both  in  intro- 
ducing foreign  ideas  and  in  securing  to  court  or  capital 
the  prestige  which  renders  possible  the  diffusion  of  those 
ideas. 

Besides  thus  serving  as  the  means  of  introducing  and 
diffusing  foreign  ideas,  hereditary  aristocracies  and 
courts  are  enabled,  in  virtue  of  their  prestige  and  quite 
independently  of  any  merits  of  their  members,  to  secure 
another  important  advantage  to  nations,  namely,  by 
setting  a common  standard,  which  is  accepted  for 
imitation  by  all  classes  of  the  people,  they  make 
for  homogeneity  of  the  ideas  and  sentiments  of  the 
people ; and  this  is  a great  condition  of  national 
strength.  It  is,  then,  perhaps,  no  mere  coincidence 
that  the  progressive  nations  have  been  the  nations 
whose  social  organisation  comprises  an  hereditary 
aristocracy  and  a hierarchy  of  classes ; whereas  the 
unprogressive  nations,  those  which  though  strongly 
organised  have  ceased  to  progress,  are  those  which 
have  had  no  native  aristocracy,  or  have  been  organised 
on  the  caste  system — a system  which  precludes  class- 


344 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


imitation.  This  impossibility  of  class-imitation  under 
a strict  caste  system  is,  no  doubt,  one  of  the  principal 
conditions  of  the  stagnation  of  the  Brahmanic  civilisa- 
tion of  India.  And  the  backwardness  of  Russia  may 
be  ascribed  in  large  measure  to  the  same  condition ; 
for  there  the  conquering  northmen,  the  Varegs,  estab- 
lished a military  and  bureaucratic  aristocracy  which  has 
remained  relatively  ineffective  in  civilising  the  masses 
of  Slav  peasantry,  owing  to  the  lack  of  any  middle 
classes  by  whom  the  aristocrats  might  have  been 
imitated.  The  stationary  state  of  the  civilisation  of 
China,  and  the  great  difference  as  regards  the  rapidity 
of  permeation  by  European  ideas  between  the  Chinese 
and  the  Japanese  (who  are  closely  allied  by  blood)  must 
be  ascribed  in  great  measure  to  the  absence  of  an 
hereditary  native  aristocracy  among  the  Chinese.  For 
in  Japan  a native  aristocracy  of  great  prestige  has  in 
recent  years  imitated  the  ideas  of  Western  civilisation 
and,  by  impressing  these  foreign-gathered  ideas  and 
institutions  upon  the  mass  of  the  people,  has  produced 
and  is  still  producing  a very  rapid  advance  of  Japanese 
civilisation  in  many  important  respects.  Whereas  in 
China  there  exists  no  native  aristocracy — for  the 
Manchu  nobles  are  regarded  as  barbarian  usurpers 
and  have  not  the  prestige,  even  if  they  had  the  will, 
to  play  the  same  role  as  the  aristocratic  class  of 
Japan ; and  the  governing  class,  which  consists  of 
men  of  letters  chosen  by  examination  from  among  all 
classes  of  the  people,  has  no  hereditary  class-prestige, 
and  therefore  has  but  little  power  of  impressing  upon 
the  people  the  ideas  which  it  has  acquired  from  Western 
civilisation. 

In  England  the  influence  of  the  hereditary  aristocracy 
in  securing  homogeneity  of  national  thought,  sentiment, 
and  custom,  has  been  very  great.  An  Englishman 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  345 


notoriously  loves  a lord  and  imitates  him  ; and,  though 
this  national  snobbishness  lends  itself  to  ridicule  and 
has  its  bad  aspects,  especially  perhaps  in  that  it  has 
done  much  to  abolish  the  picturesque  local  and  class 
differences  of  speech  and  manners  and  dress,  it  has  yet 
aided  greatly  in  making  the  English  people  the  most 
mentally  homogeneous  nation  in  the  world,  and  so  in 
bringing  it  further  than  any  other  along  the  path  of 
evolution  of  a national  self-consciousness  and  a truly 
national  will. 

Contra-imitation  demands  a few  words  of  separate 
notice.  It  plays  a considerable  part,  as  Tarde  has 
pointed  out,  in  rendering  societies  homogeneous.  Some 
small  societies  or  associations  of  cranks  and  faddists 
owe  their  existence  chiefly  to  its  operation.  In  national 
societies  also  it  is  operative,  especially  strongly  perhaps 
in  the  English  nation.  Most  Englishmen  would  scorn 
to  kiss  and  embrace  one  another  or  to  gesticulate  freely, 
if  only  because  Frenchmen  do  these  things ; they  would 
not  wear  their  hair  either  long  or  very  closely  cropped, 
because  Germans  do  so ; they  would  not  have  a con- 
script army  or  universal  military  training,  because 
nearly  every  other  European  nation  has  them.  The 
Chinese  people  shows  how  contra-imitation  may  operate 
as  a considerable  conservative  power  in  a people  among 
whom  it  is  strongly  developed.  It  prevents  or  greatly 
retards  their  assimilation  by  imitation  of  foreign  ideas, 
and  at  the  same  time  it  confirms  them  in  the  mainte- 
nance of  those  practices,  such  as  the  wearing  of  the 
queue,  by  means  of  which  they  make  themselves  visibly 
distinguished  from  all  other  peoples. 

Play 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  anything  of  the  social- 
ising influence  of  the  play  tendency.  It  is  obvious  that 


346 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


even  its  cruder  manifestations,  athletic  contests  and 
games  of  all  sorts,  not  only  exert  among  us  an  im- 
portant influence  in  moulding  individuals,  preparing 
them  for  social  life,  for  co-operation,  for  submission,  and 
for  leadership,  for  the  postponement  of  individual  to 
collective  ends,  but  also  are  playing  no  inconsiderable 
part  in  shaping  the  destinies  of  the  British  Empire,  by 
encouraging  a friendly  intercourse  and  rivalry  between 
its  widely  scattered  parts,  and  by  keeping  the  various 
parts  present  to  the  consciousness  of  each  other  part. 
Wherever  games  have  been  customary,  they  must  have 
exerted  similar  socialising  influences  in  some  degree. 
The  modern  Olympic  games  (in  this  respect  re- 
sembling those  of  ancient  Greece),  and  the  many  inter- 
national sporting  contests  of  the  present  time,  are  doing 
something  to  bring  nations  into  more  sympathetic 
relations,  and  may  yet  do  much  more  in  this  direction. 

The  play  impulse  is  usually  regarded  as  one  of  the 
principal  roots  of  artistic  production.  In  so  far  as  this 
is  the  case,  it  has  its  share  in  the  socialising  influences  of 
art,  which  are  so  great  and  so  obvious  that  it  is  hardly 
necessary  to  mention  them.  The  works  of  art  produced 
within  a nation  direct  the  attention  of  individuals 
towards  certain  aspects  of  life  and  nature,  and  teach 
them  all  to  experience  the  same  emotions  in  face  of 
these  aspects.  In  this  way  they  tend  to  the  increase  of 
mutual  understanding  and  sympathy,  and  they  further 
that  homogeneity  of  mind  which  is  an  essential  con- 
dition of  the  development  of  the  collective  mental  life 
of  a people. 

In  a similar  way  art  tends  to  soften  and  socialise  the 
relations  between  nations.  When  of  two  nations  each 
has  learnt  to  appreciate  and  admire  the  art-products  of 
the  other,  the  gulf  between  them  is  bridged  over  and  a 
firm  foundation  for  mutual  sympathy  and  regard  is  laid. 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  347 


As  a prominent  instance,  consider  how  greatly  the  art 
of  the  Japanese  has  facilitated  their  entrance  into  the 
exclusive  circle  of  civilised  and  progressive  peoples. 
Or  again,  consider  how  great  an  influence  towards 
European  solidarity  is  exerted  by  the  common  admira- 
tion of  the  nations  of  Europe  for  the  sculpture  of 
ancient  Greece,  for  the  music  of  modern  Germany, 
the  Gothic  architecture  of  France  and  England,  the 
paintings  of  Italy. 

Habit 

Of  the  great  general  tendencies  common  to  the  minds 
of  all  men  of  all  ages,  the  last  of  our  list  in  Section  I. 
was  the  tendency  for  all  mental  processes  to  become 
facilitated  by  repetition,  the  tendency  to  the  formation 
of  habits  of  thought  and  action  which  became  more 
and  more  fixed  in  the  individual  as  he  grows  older ; and 
the  consequent  preference,  increasing  greatly  in  each 
individual  with  advancing  age,  for  the  familiar  and  the 
dislike  of  all  that  is  novel  in  more  than  a very  moderate 
degree. 

It  was  said  above  that  imitation  is  the  gteat  con- 
servative tendency  of  society,  because  it  leads  each 
generation  to  adopt  with  but  little  change  the  mass  of 
customs  and  traditions  of  the  preceding  generation. 
But  imitation  is  conservative  in  virtue  only  of  the  co- 
operation of  the  tendency  we  are  now  considering. 
For  this  tendency  sets  narrow  limits  to  that  other 
tendency  of  imitation — the  tendency  to  produce  social 
changes  by  the  introduction  into  any  class  or  people 
of  the  ways  of  thought  and  action  of  other  classes  or 
people?,  It  is  this  tendency  which  secures  that  each 
generation  imitates  chiefly  its  predecessor  rather  than 
any  foreign  models  ; for  the  native,  and  local,  and  class 
ways  of  thought,  feeling,  and  action  are  the  models  first 


348 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


presented  to  the  child  ; under  their  influence  the  earliest 
habits  are  formed,  and  a strong  bias  is  determined ; so 
that,  by  the  time  the  individual  comes  under  the  influence 
of  foreign  models,  he  is  already  moulded  to  the  pattern 
of  his  nation,  his  class,  his  locality,  and  is  but  little 
capable  of  radical  change ; that  is  to  say,  in  virtue  of 
habits  formed  on  the  pattern  of  his  class  and  nation,  he  is 
already  refractory  to  the  influence  of  foreign  models,  save 
in  a small  degree.  In  short,  the  formation  of  habits  by 
the  individuals  of  each  generation  is  an  essential  con- 
dition of  the  perpetuation  of  custom,  and  custom  is  the 
principal  condition  of  all  social  organisation. 

One  point  is  worthy  of  special  notice  in  this  con- 
nection. The  prevalence  of  certain  conditions  of  life, 
of  certain  types  of  culture  and  modes  of  occupation, 
within  a society  are  favourable  to  the  influence  of  the 
elder  members  of  the  society,  while  other  conditions  are 
unfavourable  to  their  influence.  Thus,  the  mode  of  life 
of  pastoral  peoples,  especially  of  pastoral  nomads,  is 
eminently  favourable  to  the  influence  and  authority  of 
the  elder  men  ; their  long  experience  renders  their 
judgments  highly  valuable  in  all  that  concerns  the 
welfare  of  the  herds,  and  their  bodily  infirmity  does 
not  diminish  this  value.  On  the  other  hand,  among 
tribes  of  people  much  given  to  warfare  the  physical 
vigour  and  the  bold  initiative  of  youth  are  high  qualifi- 
cations for  leadership ; hence  the  influence  of  the  elders 
is  relatively  less.  Accordingly,  we  find  that  societies  of 
the  former  kind  are  in  general  extremely  stable  and 
conservative.  They  develop  a patriarchal  system,  and 
under  the  conservative  influence  of  their  patriarchs  they 
remain  unchanged  for  long  ages.  There  are  pastoral 
nomads  still  existing  under  a social  organisation  which 
has  remained  unchanged  since  the  dawn  of  history  and, 
not  imorobably,  from  a much  more  remote  period.  On 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  349 


the  other  hand,  the  warlike  peoples  are  much  more  liable 
to  change.  We  have  already  seen  that  they  have  been 
the  most  progressive  peoples ; and  their  progress  has 
been  due  in  part,  no  doubt,  to  the  effects  of  military 
group-selection  and  to  the  moralising  influences  of  war, 
but  in  part  also  to  their  less  conservative  character 
which  they  owe  to  the  diminished  influence  of  the  older, 
and  therefore  more  conservative,  individuals. 

The  tendency  to  the  formation  of  habits,  which  per- 
vades every  function  of  the  mind,  exerts  in  yet  another 
way  an  immense  influence  on  private  life,  and,  perhaps, 
an  even  greater  influence  on  the  collective  life  of 
societies  ; I refer  to  the  tendency  to  convert  means  into 
ends.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  in  very  many 
persons,  not  given  to  reflection  on  and  analysis  of 
motives,  the  ends  of  their  actions  seldom  come  clearly 
and  explicitly  to  consciousness.  Their  actions  are 
largely  determined  by  the  blind  instinctive  impulses  on 
the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other,  by  simple  acquiescence  in, 
and  imitation  of,  the  kinds  of  activity  they  see  going 
on  about  them.  Of  many  women  especially  is  this  true. 
Many  a woman  who  spends  half  her  energies  in  making 
things  clean  and  tidy  and  setting  her  house  in  order 
either  never  explicitly  recognises  the  end  of  this  activity, 
namely,  domestic  comfort,  convenience,  and  happiness, 
or  else,  losing  sight  of  this  end  and  transforming  the 
means  into  an  end,  sacrifices  in  a considerable  degree 
the  true  end  to  the  perfection  of  the  means.  With  men 
nothing  is  commoner  than  that  the  earning  of  money, 
at  first  undertaken  purely  as  means  to  an  end,  becomes 
an  end  in  itself.  So  with  all  of  us,  the  perfection  of 
powers,  whether  of  the  body  or  of  the  mind,  the  acquisi- 
tion of  learning,  of  a good  literary  style,  or  of  any  other 
accomplishment,  is  very  apt  to  become  an  end  in  itself, 
to  which  the  true  end  may  be  in  large  measure  sacri- 


350 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


ficed ; and  some  moralists  even  expressly  commend  the 
transformation  of  such  means  into  ends. 

In  the  collective  thought  and  action  of  societies  this 
tendency  appears  even  more  strongly  than  in  private 
conduct,  and  for  this  reason — while  a man  may  question 
the  usefulness  of  any  particular  mode  of  activity  that  is 
practiced  by  a few  of  his  fellows  only,  he  is  less  likely 
to  raise  any  such  question  in  regard  to  any  practice  that 
he  finds  faithfully  observed  by  all  his  fellows.  The  fact 
that  all  his  fellows  observe  the  practice  is  sufficient  to 
put  it  beyond  criticism  and  to  lead  him  to  regard  it  as 
an  end  in  itself.  And  this  is  one  of  the  principal  bases 
of  custom.  The  ends  or  purposes  of  many  customs  are 
lost  in  the  mists  of  antiquity.  In  some  cases,  perhaps, 
the  end  has  never  been  clearly  defined  in  any  one  man’s 
mind.  The  custom  may  have  arisen  as  a compromise 
or  fusion  between  diverse  customs,  or  through  some 
purely  instinctive  mode  of  reaction,  or  through  per- 
verted imitation  of  some  foreign  model.  But,  however 
and  for  whatever  purpose  instituted,  a custom  once 
established,  the  practice  of  it  always  becomes  in 
some  degree  an  end  in  itself,  and  men  are  prepared  to 
maintain  it,  often  at  great  cost  of  effort  or  discomfort, 
long  after  it  serves  any  useful  end.  Hence  the  fact  that 
meaningless  formalities  and  rites  continue  to  surround 
almost  all  ancient  institutions. 

Besides  thus  playing  its  part  as  one  of  the  conserva- 
tive forces,  this  tendency  leads  also  to  many  mistaken 
social  efforts  and  institutions,  or  to  the  undue  emphasis 
of  social  truths.  Thus,  such  things  as  liberty  and 
equality  are  seen  by  a Rousseau  to  be  means  to  human 
happiness  ; he  preaches  liberty  and  equality ; his  ideas 
are  accepted  by  the  masses,  and  liberty  and  equality 
become  for  them  ends  in  themselves,  and  all  social  well- 
being is  for  a time  sacrificed  to  them.  In  a similar  way 


IMITATION,  PLAY,  AND  HABIT  351 


Free  Trade  was  preached  by  Cobden  as  a means  to  an 
end.  The  idea  was  widely  accepted,  and  for  great 
numbers  of  men  the  means  has  become  an  end.  So 
also  by  setting  up  as  ends  liberty  and  equality,  which 
are  but  means  to  human  welfare  and  happiness,  the 
people  of  the  United  States  of  America  have  brought 
upon  themselves  the  insoluble  negro  problem  ; and  the 
British  people,  in  virtue  of  the  same  tendency,  is  in 
danger  of  creating  a similar  problem  in  South  Africa. 

Our  brief  review  of  the  social  operations  of  the 
primary  tendencies  of  the  human  mind  is  finished. 
Enough  perhaps  has  been  said  to  convince  the  reader 
that  the  life  of  societies  is  not  merely  the  sum  of  the 
activities  of  individuals  moved  by  enlightened  self- 
interest,  or  by  intelligent  desire  for  pleasure  and  aver- 
sion from  pain ; and  to  show  him  that  the  springs 
of  all  the  complex  activities  that  make  up  the  life  of 
societies  must  be  sought  in  the  instincts  and  in  the 
other  primary  tendencies  that  are  common  to  all  men 
and  are  deeply  rooted  in  the  remote  ancestry  of 
the  race. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  CHAPTER 
THEORIES  OF  ACTION 

My  principal  aim  in  writing  this  volume  was  to 
improve  the  psychological  foundations  of  the 
social  sciences  by  deepening  our  understanding  of  the 
principles  of  human  conduct.  In  the  three  and  a half 
years  which  have  elapsed  since  the  appearance  of  its 
first  edition,  I have  discerned  here  and  there  in  sub- 
sequent publications  what  seem  to  be  traces  of  its 
influence.  But  none  of  the  writers  who  have  criticized 
or  otherwise  referred  to  the  book  seems  to  have  noticed 
that  it  propounds  a theory  of  action  which  is  applicable 
to  every  form  of  animal  and  human  effort,  from  the 
animalcule’s  pursuit  of  food  or  prey  to  the  highest 
forms  of  moral  volition.  I therefore  add  this  appendix 
to  the  present  edition  with  a threefold  purpose.  First 
I desire  to  draw  attention  to  this  theory  of  action  by 
throwing  it  into  stronger  relief;  secondly,  I desire  to 
present  it  in  the  form  of  a distinct  challenge  both  to  my 
colleagues  the  psychologists,  and  especially  to  writers 
on  moral  philosophy,  to  whose  hands  the  positive  theory 
of  conduct  has  been  too  largely  confided  by  the  psycho- 
logists ; thirdly,  I desire  to  help  young  students  of 
psychology  and  ethics  to  understand  the  relation  of  the 
theory  of  action  expounded  in  this  book  to  other 
theories  of  action  widely  current  at  the  present  time- 

35* 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION 


353 


The  execution  of  this  threefold  design  involves  a some- 
what technical  and  controversial  discussion  hardly 
suited  for  the  general  reader  ; I have  therefore  pre- 
ferred to  present  it  in  the  form  of  an  appendix,  rather 
than  to  insert  it  in  the  body  of  the  text. 

I will  first  state  dogmatically  and  explicitly  the 
theory  of  action  which  is  implied  throughout  this 
volume,  and  will  then  justify  it  by  showing  the  in- 
adequacy of  the  other  theories  of  action  that  have  been 
most  widely  accepted. 

Human  conduct,  which  in  its  various  spheres  is  the 
topic  with  which  all  the  social  sciences  are  concerned,  is 
a species  of  a wider  genus,  namely,  behaviour.  Con- 
duct is  the  behaviour  of  self-conscious  and  rational 
beings ; it  is  the  highest  type  of  behaviour ; and,  if  we 
desire  to  understand  conduct,  we  must  first  achieve 
some  adequate  conception  of  behaviour  in  general  and 
must  then  discover  in  what  ways  conduct,  the  highest 
type,  differs  from  all  the  lower  types  of  behaviour. 

We  sometimes  speak  of  the  behaviour  of  inert  or 
inorganic  things,  such  things  as  tool,  or  weapons,  or 
even  the  weather.  But  in  such  cases  we  usually 
recognize  more  or  less  clearly  that  we  are  using  the 
word  playfully — we  playfully  regard  the  object  as  alive 
— and  the  ground  of  our  doing  so  is  generally  that  it 
seems  to  set  itself  in  opposition  to  our  will,  and  to  strive 
to  frustrate  or  hinder  the  accomplishment  of  our  pur- 
pose. It  is  generally  recognized  that  the  word 
“ behaviour  ” implies  certain  peculiarities  which  are  only 
found  in  ^ the  movements  of  living  things.  These 
peculiarities  are  the  marks  of  life  ; wherever  we  observe 
them,  we  confidently  infer  life.  We  form  our  notion  of 
behaviour  by  the  observation  of  the  movements  of 
living  things  ; and,  in  order  to  explicate  this  notion,  we 
must  discover  by  what  marks  behaviour  is  distinguished 


354 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


from  all  merely  physical  or  mechanical  movements. 
If  in  imagination  we  construct  a scale  of  types  of 
behaviour  ranging  from  the  simplest  to  the  most 
complex,*  we  find  that  at  all  levels  of  complexity 
behaviour  presents  four  peculiar  marks. 

1.  The  creature  does  not  merely  move  in  a certain 
direction,  like  an  inert  mass  impelled  by  external  force ; 
its  movements  are  quite  incapable  of  being  described  in 
the  language  with  which  we  describe  mechanical  move- 
ments ; we  can  only  describe  them  by  saying  that  the 
creature  strives  persistently  towards  an  end.  For  its 
movements  do  not  cease  when  it  meets  with  obstacles, 
or  when  it  is  subjected  to  forces  which  tend  to  deflect 
it : such  obstacles  and  such  opposition  rather  provoke 
still  more  forcible  striving,  and  this  striving  only 
terminates  upon  the  attainment  of  its  natural  end ; 
which  end  is  generally  some  change  in  its  relation  to 
surrounding  objects,  a change  that  subserves  the  life 
of  the  individual  creature  or  of  its  species. 

2.  The  striving  of  the  creature  is  not  merely  a per- 
sistent pushing  in  a given  direction ; though  the  striving 
persists  when  obstacles  are  encountered,  the  kind  and 
direction  of  movement  are  varied  again  and  again  so 
long  as  the  obstacle  is  not  overcome.  Behaviour  is  a 
persistent  trial  or  striving  towards  an  end,  with,  if 
necessary,  variation  of  the  means  employed  for  its 
attainment. 

3.  In  behaviour  the  whole^r^anism  is  involved.  Every 
action  that  we  recognize  as  an  instance  of  behaviour  is 
not  merely  a partial  reaction,  such  as  the  reflex  move- 
ment of  a limb,  which  seems  to  be  of  a mechanical  or 
quasi-mechanical  character;  rather,  in  every  case  of 

* For  such  a scale  of  instances  of  behaviour  I would  refer  the 
reader  to  my  volume  in  the  Home  University  Library,  “ Psycho- 
logy,  the  Study  of  Behaviour.” 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION 


355 


behaviour,  the  energy  of  the  whole  organism  seems  to 
be  concentrated  upon  the  task  of  achieving  the  end  : all 
its  parts  and  organs  are  subordinated  to  and  co-ordinated 
with  the  organs  primarily  involved  in  the  activity. 

4.  The  fourth  mark  of  behaviour  is  equally  character- 
istic and  probably  equally  universal  with  the  other 
three,  though  it  is  less  easily  observed ; it  is,  namely, 
that,  although,  on  the  recurrence  of  a situation  which  has 
previously  evoked  behaviour,  the  creature  may  behave 
again  in  a very  similar  manner,  yet  the  activity  is  not 
rep^ated_in  just  th^  s^me  fashion_as_on  the  previous 
occasipnXas  is  the  case  with  mechanical  processes,  except 
in  so  far  as  the  machine  has  been  in  some  degree  worn 
out  on  the  former  occasion) ; there  is  as  a rule  some 
evidence  of  increased  efficiency  of  action,  of  better 
adaptation  of  the  means  adopted  to  the  end  sought — 
the  process  of  gaining  the  end  is  shortened,  or  in  some 
other  way  exhibits  increased  efficiency  in  subserving 
the  life  of  the  individual  or  of  the  species. 

When  we  survey  the  whole  world  of  material  things 
accessible  to  our  perception,  these  seem,  as  a matter  of 
immediate  observation  and  apart  from  all  theories  of 
the  relation  of  mind  to  matter,  to  fall  into  two  great 
classes,  namely,  (i)  a class  consisting  of  those  things 
whose  changes  seem  to  be  purely  physical  happenings, 
explicable  by  mechanical  principles ; (2)  a class  of 
things  whose  changes  exhibit  the  marks  of  behaviour 
and  seem  to  be  incapable  of  mechanical  explanation, 
but  rather  to  be  always  directed,  however  vaguely, 
towards  an  end — that  is  to  say,  are  teleological  or  pur- 
posive ; and  this  class  constitutes  the  realm  of  life, 
y^he  four  peculiarities  which,  as  we  have  seen,  charac- 
terize behaviour  are  purely  objective  or  outward  marks 
presented  to  the  observation  of  the  onlooker.  But  to 
say  that  behaviour  is  purposive  is  to  imply  that  it  has 


356 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


also  an  inner  side  or  aspect  which  is  analogous  to,  and 
of  the  same  order  as,  our  immediate  experience  of  our 
own  purposive  activities. /We  are  accustomed  to  accept 
as  the  type  of  purposive  action  our  own  most  decidedly 
volitional  efforts,  in  which  we  deliberately  choose,  and 
self-consciously  strive,  to  bring  about  some  state  of 
affairs  that  we  clearly  foresee  and  desire.  And  it  has 
been  the  practice  of  many  writers,  accepting  such 
volitional  effort  as  the  type  of  purposive  activity,  to 
refuse  to  admit  to  the  same  category  any  actions  that 
do  not  seem  to  be  prompted  and  guided  by  clear  fore- 
sight of  the  end  desired  and  willed.  ./"When  purposive 
activity  is  conceived  in  this  very  restricted  way,  and  is 
set  over  against  mechanical  processes,  as  process  of  a 
radically  different  type,  there  remains  the  difficulty  of 
assigning  the  place  and  affinities  of  the  lower  forms  of 
behaviour. 

One  way  of  solving  the  difficulty  thus  created  is 
that  adopted  by  Descartes,  namely,  to  assign  all  the 
lower  forms  of  behaviour  to  the  mechanical  category. 
But  this  is  profoundly  unsatisfactory  for  two  reasons : 
(l)  As  we  have  seen,  behaviour  everywhere  presents  the 
outward  marks  which  are  common  to  the  lower  forms 
of  behaviour  and  to  human  conduct,  and  which  set  it 
so  widely  apart  from  mechanical  processes ; (2)  this 
way  of  dealing  with  the  difficulty  creates  a still  greater 
difficulty,  namely,  it  sets  up  an  absolute  breach  between 
men  and  animals,  ignoring  all  the  unmistakable  indica- 
tions of  community  of  nature  and  evolutional  continuity 
between  the  higher  and  the  lower  forms  of  life. 

The  creation  of  this  second  difficulty  has  naturally 
resulted  in  the  attempt  to  solve  it  by  forcing  the  truly 
purposive  type  of  process  into  the  mechanical  category ; 
that  is,  by  regarding  as  wholly  illusory  the  conscious- 
ness of  striving  towards  an  end  which  every  man  has 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION 


357 


when  he  acts  with  deliberate  purpose  ; by  assuming 
that  we  are  deceived  when  we  believe  ourselves  to  be 
real  agents  striving  more  or  less  effectively  to  determine 
the  course  of  events  and  to  shape  them  to  our  will  and 
purpose.  The  demonstration  that  this  view  is  untenable 
requires  a very  long  and  intricate  argument,  which 
cannot  be  presented  here  even  in  briefest  outline.^  It 
must  suffice  to  say  that  the  acceptance  of  this  view 
would  be  subversive  of  all  moral  philosophy,  would 
deprive  ethical  principles  and  ethical  discussion  of  all 
meaning  and  value  \ Aox  if  our  consciousness  of  striving 
to  achieve  ends,  to  realize  ideals,  to  live  up  to  standards 
of  conduct,  if  all  this  is  illusory,  then,  to  seek  to  deter- 
mine what  we  ought  to  do  and  to  be,  or  to  set  up 
standards  or  norms  or  ideals,  is  wholly  futile ; such 
endeavours  can  at  best  only  serve  to  make  us  more 
acutely  aware  of  our  impotence  in  face  of  such  ideals.^ 
/We  can  only  avoid  this  difficulty  and  this  impasse  by 
recognizing  that  the  commonly  entertained  notion  of 
purposive  activity  is  too  narrow,  and  that  it  must  be 
widened  to  include  the  lower  forms  of  behaviour  as 
well  as  the  higher  forms  which  constitute  human 
conduct. 

The  only  serious  objection  that  can  be  raised  to  this 
widening  of  the  notion  of  purposive  activity  is  the 
contention  that  the  word  purpose  ” essentially  implies 
on  the  part  of  the  agent  consciousness  of  the  goal  that 
he  seeks  to  attain,  of  the  end  he  pursues ; it  may 
be  said  that  it  is  only  in  so  far  as  the  agent  may 
reasonably  be  regarded  as  clearly  conscious  of  the  goal 
he  seeks  that  we  can  claim  to  understand  in  any  sense 

(^To  the  presentation  of  this  argument  I have  devoted  a 
separate  volume  Body  and  Mind,  a History  and  Defence  of 
Animism,”  London,  1911),  to  which  I would  refer  any  reader  who 
desires  to  form  an  opinion  on  this  difficult  question. 


358 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


or  degree  how  the  end  determines  the  course  of  the 
activity,  how,  in  short,  the  action  is  teleologically 
determined.  And  it  may  be  said,  with  truth,  that  we 
are  not  warranted  in  believing  that  the  lower  animals 
are  capable  of  conceiving,  or  of  being  in  any  way  clearly 
conscious  of,  the  ends  of  their  actions  ; and  therefore,  it 
may  be  said,  it  is  illegitimate  to  regard  the  lower  forms 
of  behaviour  as  purposive  or  to  claim  that  our  immediate 
experience  of  purposive  activity  in  any  way  enables  us 
to  understand  them. 

This  objection  may  be  removed  by  the  following 
considerations.  Mental  process  seems  to  be  always  a 
process  of  striving  or  conation  initiated  and  guided  by 
a process  or  act  of  knowing,  of  apprehension  ; and  this 
knowing  or  cognition  is  always  a becoming  aware  of 
something,  or  of  some  state  of  affairs,  as  given  or 
present,  together  with  an  anticipation  of  some  change. 
That  is  to  say,  mental  life  does  not  consist  in  a succes- 
sion of  different  states  of  the  subject,  called  states  of 
consciousness  or  ideas  or  what  not;  but  it  consists 
§]waj^s  in  an  activity  of  a subject  in  respect  of  an 
_?£P^^hended,_  an  activity  which  constantly 
changes  or  modifies  the  relation  between  subject  and 
object.  Now  this  change  which  is  to  be  effected,  and 
which  is  the  goal  or  end  of  action,  is  anticipated  with, 
very  different  degrees  of  clearness  and  adequacy  at 
diff^ent  levels  of  mental  life.  In  many  of  our  own 
voluntary  actions  the  end  is  anticipated  or  foreseen  in 
the  most  general  manner  only;  to  take  a trivial  but 
instructive  instance : you  cough  in  order  to  clear  your 
throat ; or,  experiencing  a slight  irritation  in  your 
throat,  you  put  out  your  hand,  tnke  up  a glass  of  water, 
and  drink,  in  order  to  allay  it.  How  very  sketchy  and 
ill-defined  may  be  your  thought  of  the  end  of  your 
action ! And  even  in  the  execution  of  our  most  care- 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION 


359 


fully  thought-out,  our  most  purposeful,  actions,  our 
anticipatory  thought  or  representation  of  the  end  to  be 
achieved  falls  far  short  of  its  actual  fulness  of  concrete 
detail.  The  anticipation  of  the  end  of  action  is,  then, 
always  more  or  less  incomplete ; its  adequacy  is  a matter 
of  degree.  Therefore  we  ought  not  to  assume  that^ 
^lear  an(L full  anticipation  or  idea  qf^the  end  is  an 
essential  condition  of  purpo^ye  act^^  we  have 
no  warrant  for  setting  up  the  instances  in  which  antici- 
pation is  least  incomplete  as  alone  conforming  to  the 
purposive  type,  and  for  setting  apart  all  instances  in 
which  anticipation  is  less  full  and  definite  as  of  a 
radically  different  nature. 

It  is  important  also  to  note  that  the  representation 
or  idea j)f_ the  end  is  not  truly  the  cause  or  determining 
condition  of  the  purposive  activity.  The  merely 
cognitive  process  of  representing  or  conceiving  the  end 
or  the  course  of  action  does  not  of  itself  suffice  to 
evoke  the  action ; we  can  imagine  many  possible 
actions  or  ends  of  actions,  without  carrying  them  out 
or  feeling  any  inclination  to  pursue  them ; in  fact  it 
often  happens  that  the  more  clearly  we  envisage  the 
end  and  course  of  a possible  action,  the  more  strongly 
averse  to  it  do  we  become.  /The  truth  is  that  the 
anticipatory  representation  of  the  end  of  action  merely 
serves  to  guide  the  course  of  action  in  detail ; the 
essential  condition  of  action  is  that  a conative  tendency, 
a latent  disposition  to  action,  shall  be  evoked. 
the  anticipatory  representation  of  the  end  is  vague  and 
sketchy  and  general,  there  the  action  will  be  general, 
vague,  imperfectly  directed  in  detail ; where  it  is  more 
detailed  and  full,  there  action  is  more  specialized,  more 
nicely  adjusted  to  the  achievement  of  its  end. 

From  our  own  experience  we  are  familiar  with 
actions  in  which  anticipation  of  the  end  varies  from 


36o 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


that  of  the  most  clear  and  detailed  nature  through  all 
degrees  of  incompleteness  down  to  the  most  vague  and 
shadowy,  a mere  anticipation  of  change  of  some  un- 
defined kind.  We  are  therefore  able  to  form  some 
notion  of  the  inner  or  subjective  side  of  the  action  of 
animals,  even  of  those  lowest  in  the  scale  of  organiza- 
tion. Putting  aside  a limited  number  of  animal  actions 
which  owe  their  definiteness  and  precision  to  guidance 
at  every  point  by  new  impressions  falling  from  moment 
to  moment  upon  the  sense-organs  (as  in  the  most 
striking  instances  of  purely  instinctive  action),  we  see 
that,  as  we  go  down  the  scale  of  life,  actions  become 
less  precisely  guided  in  deMl,  and  present  more  and 
more  the  character  of  random  or  but  yaguely  directed^, 
efforts  ; in  this  corresponding  ^ what  we  may  legiti- 
mately suppose  to  be  the  increasing  vagueness  of^  the 
anticipatpry_repre^sen_tatiqns  bxw^^  they  are  guided. 
TChe,  theoretical  lower  limit  of  this  series  would  be  what 
has  been  well  called  (by  Dr.  Stout)  anoetic  sentience ; 
a,  mere  _feeljng_  or^  send  Jnyqlvin^  no  objective 
reference  and  giving  rise  only  to  movement  or  effort 
that_  is  cqmpl^^^  undirected.  This  lower  limit  is 
approached  in  our  own  experience  when  we  stir  uneasily 
or  writhe  or  throw  ourselves  wildly  about,  under  the 
stimulus  of  some  vaguely  localized  internal  pain.  But 
we  do  not  ourselves  experience  the  limiting  case,  and 
it  is  questionable  whether  we  can  properly  suppose  it 
to  be  realized  in  the  simplest  instances  of  animal 
behaviour ; it  seems  probable  that  the  actions  of  even 
the  lowliest  animals  imply  a vague  awareness  of  some- 
thing, together  with  some  vague  forward  reference, 
some  vague  anticipation  of  a change  in  this  something. 

Knowing,  then,  is  always  for  the  sake  of  action  ; the  ^ 
function  of  cognition  is  to  initiate  action  and  to  guide 
But  the  activity  implies  the  evoking,  the 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION 


361 


coming  Into  play,  of  a latent  tendency  to  action,  a con- 
ative disposition  ; every  such  tendency  or  conative  dis- 
position is  either  of  a very  general  or  of  a more  specialized 
or  specific  character  ; and  each  such  conative  tendency* 
when  awakened  or  brought  into  play,  maintains  itself 
until  its  proper  or  specific  end  is  attained,  and  sustains 
also  the  course  of  bodily  and  mental  activity  required 
for  the  attainment  of  that  end.  -/^hen,  then,  any 
creature  strives  towards  an  end  or  goal,  it  is  because  it 
possesses  as  an  ultimate  feature  of  its  constitution  what 
we  can  only  call  a disposition  or  latent  tendency  to 
strive  towards  that  end,  a conative  disposition  which  is 
actualized  or  brought  into  operation  by  the  perception 
(or  other  mode  of  cognition)  of  some  object.  Each 
organism  is  endowed,  according  to  its  species,  with  a 
certain  number  and  variety  of  such  conative  dispositions 
as  a part  of  its  hereditary  equipment  for  the  battle  of 
life;  and  in  the  course  of  its  life  these  may  undergo 
certain  modifications  and  differentiations. 

To  attempt  to  give  any  further  account  of  the  nature 
of  these  conative  dispositions  would  be  to  enter  upon 
a province  of  metaphysical  speculation,  and  is  a task 
not  demanded  of  psychology.  I will  only  say  in  this 
connection  that  we  may  perhaps  describe  all  living 
things  as  expressions  or  embodiments  of  what  we  may 
vaguely  name,  with  Schopenhauer,  Will,  or,  with 
Bergson,  the  vital __ impulsion  {Velan  vitat),  or,  more 
simply,  life ; and  each  specifically  directed  conative 
tendency  we  may  regard  as  a differentiation  of  this 
fundamental  will-to-live,  conditioned  by  a conative  dis- 
position. At  the  standpoint  of  empirical  science,  we 
must  accept  these  conative  dispositions  as  ultimate 
facts,  not  capable  of  being  analyzed  or  of  being 
explained  by  being  shown  to  be  instances  of  any 
wider  more  fundamental  notion.  To  adopt  this  view 


362 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


is  to  assert  that  the  facts  of  behaviour,  the  empirical 
data  of  psychology,  must  be  explained  in  terms  of  funda- 
mental conceptions  proper  to  it  as  an  independent 
science.  The  physicist  works,  and  explains  his  facts, 
in  terms  of  the  conception  of  mechanical  process,  not 
necessarily  concerning  himself  with  the  metaphysical 
problem  that  underlies  this  conception  ; for  example, 
he  accepts  as  an  ultimate  fact  the  tendency  of  a moving 
mass  to  continue  to  move  in  a straight  line  without 
change  of  velocity.  In  a similar  manner  the  psycho- 
logist may  work,  and  explain  his  facts,  in  terms  of  the 
conception  of  purposive  or  appetitive  process.  The 
physicist  studies  mechanical  processes  of  all  kinds  in 
order  to  arrive  at  the  most  general  laws  of  mechanical 
process ; and  his  explanation  of  any  one  fact  of 
observation  consists  in  exhibiting  it  as  an  instance  of 
the  operation  of  such  general  laws ; that  is,  in  showing 
that  it  conforms  to  the  type,  that  it  may  be  analytically 
regarded  as  a conjunction  of  simple  mechanical  pro- 
cesses obeying  the  most  general  laws  of  mechanism. 
Just  in  the  same  way  the  psychologist  has  to  study 
appetitive  processes  of  all  kinds  and  of  all  degrees  of 
complexity,  in  order  to  ascertain  the  most  general 
laws  of  appetitive  process.  And  his  explanation  of  any 
process  of  the  kind  with  which  he  is  concerned  must 
consist  in  exhibiting  it  as  an  instance  of  the  operation 
of  such  general  laws  of  appetition,  in  showing  how  it 
may  be  analytically  regarded  as  a conjunction  of 
appetitions  according  to  the  general  laws  of  appetition 
that  he  has  established.  According  to  this  view, 
then,  the  acts  of  human  beings,  all  our  volitions,  our 
efforts,  our  resolutions,  choices,  and  decisions,  have 
to  be  explained  in  terms  of  the  laws  of  appetition, 
^Vhen,  and  not  until,  we  can  exhibit  any  particular 
instance  of  conduct  or  of  behaviour  as  the  expression 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION  363 

of  conative  tendencies  which  are  ultimate  constituents 
of  the  organism,  we  can  claim  to  have  explained  it. 

Owing  to  the  great  development  of  physical  science 
in  modern  times  and  to  the  immense  success  that  has 
attended  its  attempts  to  explain  physical  facts  in  terms 
of  the  laws  of  mechanism,  there  obtains  very  widely  at 
the  present  time  the  opinion  that  we  understand 
mechanical  process  in  some  more  intimate  sense  than, 
we  can  understand  appetitive  process ; and  that,  there- 
fore, it  is  the  business  of  all  science  to  explain  its  facts 
in  terms  of  the  laws  of  mechanism,  and  that  appetitive 
processes  can  only  be  rendered  intelligible  if  they  can 
be  reduced  to  the  mechanical  type.  But  this  is  a 
delusion.  /Of  the  two  types  of  process,  we  certainly 
understand  the  appetitive  more  intimately  than  the 
mechanical ; for  we  directly  experience  appetition,  we 
have  an  inside  acquaintance  with  it,  as  well  as  acquaint- 
ance of  the  purely  external  kind  which  is  the  only  kind 
of  acquaintance  that  we  have  with  mechanical  process. 

when  Hietaphyaidgiis  at^mpt^o^gq  behi^^  t^^^  dis- 
tinction of  mechanic^  andi^ppetitiye  processes  (which 
for  science  is  fundamental)  and  attempt  to  show  that 
processes  of  the  two  types  are  really  of  like  nature,  the 
most  plausible  view  seems  to  be  that  which  regards 
mechanic^process  as  reducible  to  the  appetitwe  type 
or  regards  it  as,  perhaps,  representing  a degradation  of 
process  of  the  appetitive  type.  This,  at  least,  is  the 
view  which  has  been  and  is  maintained  by  some  of  the 
most  distinguished  metaphysicians  and  which  seems  to 
involve  less  serious  difficulties  than  the  acceptance  of 
the  converse  view.^ 

I have  now  stated  explicitly  the  theory  of  action 

* The  most  thorough  and  convincing  defence  of  this  view  is  to 
be  found  in  Professor  James  Ward’s  recently  published  volume 
of  Gifford  Lectures,  ^^The  Realm  of  Ends,”  London,  1911. 


3®4 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


which  is  implied  by  the  doctrines  of  instinct,  of  senti- 
^ ment,  and  of  volition,  expounded  in  this  volume  ; and  it 
remains  to  justify  it  by  showing  the  inadequacy  of  other 
theories  of  action. 

The  theory  of  action  most  widely  accepted  by 
"'/y  psychologists  at  the  present  time  is,  perhaps,  the  theory 
which  regards  all  organisms  as  merely  machines  and  all 

I put  this  aside 


for  the  reasons  already  stated. 

Of  other  theories,  the  one  which  has  exercised  the 
greatest  influence  in  modern  speculation  is  the  theory 
of  psychological  hedonism  ; this  is  the  theory  of  action 
which  was  unfortunately  adopted  by  the  founders  of 
Utilitarianism  as  the  psychological  foundation  of  all 
their  social  and  ethical  doctrines.*  /It  asserts  that 
the  motive  of  all  action  is  the  desire  to  obtain  in- 
crease of  pleasure  or  diminution  of  pain.  It  claims 
to  be  an  empirical  induction  from  the  undeniable  fact 
that  men  do  seek  pleasure  and  do  try  to  avoid  pain. 
But  its  strange  power  to  hold  the  allegiance  of  those 
who  have  once  accepted  it  is  to  be  explained  by  the 
fact  that  it  seems  to  afford  a rational  explanation  of  all 
conduct,  to  show  a sufficient  cause  for  all  action. 
Whenever  an  action  can  be  regarded  as  an  effort  in 
pursuit  of  pleasure  or  in  avoidance  of  pain,  we  seem  to 
have  an  explanation  which  is  ultimate  and  intelligible. 
We  feel  no  need  to  inquire — Why  should  anyone  prefer 
pleasure  to  pain,  or  seek  to  gain  pleasure  and  to  avoid 
pain  ? No  other  theory  of  the  ground  of  action  seems 
at  first  sight  so  self-evident  and  satisfying. 


* The  critics  of  Utilitarianism  have  concentrated  their  attack 
upon  this  false  psychological  doctrine ; but  the  student  of  Ethics 
should  not  be  misled  into  supposing  that  the  Utilitarian  principle, 
as  the  criterion  of  the  good  or  the  right,  stands  or  falls  with 
psychological  hedonism. 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION 


365 


It  is,  no  doubt,  possible  to  show  the  fallacious  nature 
of  the  doctrine  by  careful  examination  of  our  own 
motives  and  unbiassed  consideration  of  the  conduct  of 
other  men.  For  such  consideration  shows  that,  when 
we  desire  any  object  or  end,  as,  for  example,  food,  what 
we  normally  desire  is  the  object  or  end  itself,  not  the 
pleasure  that  may  attend  the  attainment  of  the  end. 
But  the  complexity  of  the  human  mind  is  so  great,  its 
springs  of  action  so  obscure,  that,  in  almost  every 
instance  of  human  behaviour,  it  is  possible  for  the 
psychological  hedonist  to  make  out  a plausible  interpre- 
tation in  terms  of  his  theory.  Two  facts  play  into  his 
hands  : first,  the  fact  that  the  attainment  of  any  desired 
object  or  goal  brings  satisfaction  or  pleasure  ; for  the 
desired  object  or  goal  can  then  be  ambiguously 
described  as  a pleasure,  and  the  agent  can  be  said  to 
have  been  moved  by  desire  for  this  pleasure  : secondly, 
the  fact  that,  even  though  a man  be  really  moved  by 
the  desire  of  pleasure,  he  may  choose  to  sacrifice  the 
pleasure  of  the  immediate  future  (or  even  to  suffer  pain) 
in  order  to  secure  a greater  pleasure  at  a later  time. 
And  the  hedonist,  when  he  cannot  plausibly  interpret  an 
action — such  as  one  involving  the  sacrifice  of  life  in  the 
cause  of  duty — in  terms  of  his  theory  in  any  other  way, 
can  always  assert  that  the  agent  was  moved  by  his 
aversion  to  the  pain  of  remorse  which  he  foresees  to  be 
the  consequence  of  neglect  of  duty. 

/Yox  these  reasons  the  easiest  and  surest  refutation  of 
the  hedonist  theory  of  action  is  provided  by  the  con- 
sideration of  animal  behaviour.  / For  we  may  observe 
numberless  instances  of  action,  of  persistent  striving 
towards  ends,  on  the  part  of  lowly  animals  which 
cannot  be  credited  with  the  power  of  anticipating  or 
desiring  the  pleasure  that  may  accrue  from  success. 

\ A second  theory  of  action,  which  claims  to  be  of 


366 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


general  validity,  ascribes  all  conation,  all  mental  and 
bodily  striving,  not  to  desire  of  future  pleasure  or 
aversion  from  future  pain,  but  to  the  influence  of  present 
pleasure  or  pain  ; that  is  to  say,  feeling  (in  the  sense 

regarded  as  an  essential  link 


3 us  to  action  in  so  far  as  it 
evokes  in  us  pleasurable  or  painful  feeling.  This 
may  conveniently  be  designated  the_  pleasure-pain 
theory  of  action.  It  is  widely  accepted  at  the  present 
time  ; it  is  more  subtle  and  less  easily  refuted  than  the 
theory  of  psychological  hedonism,  which  is  no  longer 
seriously  to  be  reckoned  with.  The  difficulty  of  refuting 
this  doctrine  arises  from  the  fact  that  mental  process 
has  almost  invariably  some  feeling-tone,  is  coloured, 
however  faintly,  with  pleasure  or  with  pain  ; so  that  it  is 
possible  to  attribute  with  some  plausibility  almost  every 
instance  of  activity  to  the  feeling  which  accompanies 
and  qualifies  it.  This  theory  rightly  recognizes  that 
what  we  normally  desire  and  strive  after  is  some  object 
or  end  which  is  not  pleasure  itself,  though  its  attain- 
ment may  be  accompanied  by  pleasurable  feeling  ; that, 
for  example,  when  we  are  hungry  we  normally  desire 
food  rather  than  the  pleasure  of  eating.  But  it  asserts 
that  the  moving  power  of  the  desire,  that  which  prompts 
us  to  action,  is  the  feeling,  the  pleasure  or  pain,  which 
we  experience  at  the  moment  of  desire  and  of  action  ; 
that,  when  we  desire  food,  that  which  prompts  us  to 
strive  after  it  is  neither  the  pleasure  which  we  anticipate 
from  eating  nor  the  pain  which  we  anticipate  from  fast- 
ing, but  the  pleasure  which  arises  from  the  thought 
of  eating  or  the  pain  which  immediately  qualifies  the 
sensation  of  hunger. 

'^^^he  last  sentence  indicates  the  line  of  criticism  by 
which  this  theory  may  be  shown  to  be  untenable.  We 


conation  ; it  is  maintained  that 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION 


367 


must  ask — Is  the  hungry  man  prompted  to  seek  food 
by  the  pleasure  of  the  thought  of  eating  or  by  the  pain 
of  hunger  ? Some  of  the  pleasure-pain  theorists  incline 
to  the  one  view,  some  to  the  other,  and  some  ^ boldly 
solve  the  difficulty  by  accepting  both,  asserting  that  de- 
sire always  involves  both  pain  and  pleasure.  These  last 
assert,  for  example,  that  the  desire  of  food  is  pleasant 
in  so  far  as  it  is  or  involves  the  thought  of  eating,  and 
that  it  is  at  the  same  time  painful  in  so  far  it  is  a 
state  of  unsatisfied  appetite  or  craving.  The  assump- 
tion that  consciousness  may  be  at  any  one  moment 
both  pleasurably  and  painfully  toned  is  one  of  very 
doubtful  validity  ; but  it  is  a further  and  perhaps  more 
serious  objection  to  this  view,  that  the  pleasure  and  the 
pain  which  are  assumed  to  coexist  should  be  assumed 
also  to  prompt  to  the  same  kind  of  action. ) And  if  the 
pleasure  and  the  pain  are  assumed  to  alternate  in  con- 
sciousness, rather  than  to  coexist,  the  same  difficulty 
remains.  As  a matter  of  fact,  every  kind  of  desire  or 
striving  may  be  pleasurable  or  painful — pleasurable  in  so 
far  as  it  progresses  towards  its  goal,  painful  in  so  far  as 
it  is  thwarted  ; and  yet  the  desire  and  the  striving 
may  persist  while  the  feeling  tone  alternates  from  the 
extreme  of  pleasure  to  extreme  of  pain.  Thus  the 
desire  of  the  lover  persists,  whether  he  be  raised  to  the 
height  of  bliss  by  the  expectation  of  success,  or  cast 
down  to  depths  of  torment  by  a rebuff. 

If  we  consider  the  animals,  we  shall  again  be  led  to 
the  true  view.  It  is  now  generally  admitted  that  we 
cannot  attribute  to  the  lower  animals  “ideas,”  or  any 
power  of  clearly  representing,  or  thinking  of,  things  not 
present  to  the  senses ; therefore  we  cannot  attribute 
their  actions  to  the  pleasure  of  the  idea  of  attaining 


‘Prof.  J.  H.  Muirhead,  for  example,  in  his  “ Elements  of  Ethics.^ 


368 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


the  end  pursued;  yet  such  animals  strive  under  the 
spur  of  hunger,  as  we  say,  and  of  other  appetites. 
Therefore,  in  the  lower  realms  of  life  all  action  must 
be  attributed  by  the  pleasure-pain  theory  to  present 
pain.  But  the  pain  of  hunger  seems  to  be  in  our  own 
case  the  pain  of  unsatisfied  craving ; that  is,  the  pain 
is  conditioned  by  the  craving,  and  presupposes  it — if 
there  were  no  craving,  there  would  be  no  pain.  But 
the  craving  is  essentially  a conation,  a tendency  to 
action,  however  vaguely  directed.  / Hunger,  then,  is  not 
a pain  which  excites  to  action ; but  it  is  fundamentally 
a tendency  to  action,  which,  when  it  cannot  achieve  its 
proper  end,  is  painful ; it  is,  in  short,  an  appetition 
arising  from  a specific  conative  disposition.  And  it 
seems  in  the  highest  degree  probable  that  this  is  true 
of  the  hunger  of  animals  and  of  all  the  pains  to  which 
the  pleasure-pain  theory  finds  itself  compelled  to  attri- 
bute their  activities. 

The  assumption,  necessarily  made  by  the  pleasure- 
pain  theory,  namely,  that  all  the  actions  of  animals 
(save  possibly  some  of  those  of  the  highest  animals) 
are  prompted  by  pain,  is,  then,  unsatisfactory,  and 
seems  to  invert  the  true  relation  of  feeling  to  conation. 
That  human  desires  and  actions  are  not  exclusively  or  in 
any  large  measure  due  to  present  pain  is  obvious ; the 
pleasure-pain  theory,  therefore,  attributes  them  in  the 
main  to  the  pleasure  which  accompanies  the  thought  of 
the  desired  ^nd  or  goal.  The  necessity  of  assuming  that 
the  actions  of  animals  and  those  of  men  are  predomin- 
antly prompted  by  the  opposite  principles  (pain  and 
pleasure  respectively)  should  give  pause  to  the  pleasure- 
pain  theory.  But,  if  we  waive  this  objection  and  inquire 
after  the  source  or  condition  of  the  pleasure  which  is 
supposed  to  accompany  the  thought  of  the  end  of 
action  and  to  prompt  to  action,  we  shall  find  that 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION 


369 


here  too  the  theory  inverts  the  true  relation  of  feeling 
to  conation.  Desire,  or  the  thought  of  the  desired  end, 
is  pleasant  in  so  far  as  an  appetite  or  conation  obtains 
some  degree  of  ideal  satisfaction  through  the  belief  in 
the  possibility  of  presently  achieving  the  act,  or  in  so 
far  as  the  activities  prompted  by  the  desire  successfully 
achieve  the  steps  which  are  the  means  to  the  end. 
Thus  hunger,  even  acute  hunger,  is  pleasant  if  we 
know  that  the  bell  will  presently  summon  us  to  a well- 
spread  table,  or  if  we  are  in  the  act  of  obtaining  the 
food  we  desire  ; yet,  if  the  hungry  man  knows  that 
it  is  impossible  for  him  to  obtain  food,  if,  for  example, 
he  is  a castaway  in  an  empty  boat,  the  thought  of 
food  is  a torment  to  him,  though  he  cannot  cease  to 
desire  it,  or  prevent  himself  from  dwelling  upon  the 
thought  of  it. 

/Both  the  pleasure  and  the  pain  of  hunger  seem,  then, 
to  be  conditioned  by  the  craving,  the  conative  tendency, 
the  specifically  directed  impulse  or  appetition.  And 
this  seems  to  be  true  not  only  of  the  desire  for  food, 
but  of  many  other  desires.  When,  for  example,  we 
desire  the  applause  of  our  fellows,  when  we  are  con- 
sumed with  what  is  called  disinterested  curiosity,  when 
we  desire  to  avenge  ourselves  or  vent  our  wrath  on 
one  who  has  insulted  us,  when  we  desire  to  relieve 
distress,  when  we  are  impelled  by  sexual  desire ; in 
all  these  cases  the  state  of  desiring  is  painful  in  so  far 
as  efforts  are  unavailing  or  attainment  appears  impossible, 
and  pleasurable  in  so  far  as  we  are  able  to  anticipate 
success  or  take  effective  steps  towards  the  desired  end. 
And  in  each  case  the  strength  of  desire,  of  the  conative 
tendency,  seems  to  be  quite,  or  almost  quite,  independent 
of  the  quality  and  of  the  intensity  of  its  hedonic  tone  ; 
while  on  the  other  hand  the  hedonic  tone  seems  to  be 
manifestly  conditioned  by  the  conative  tendency,  its 


370 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


quality  by  the  success  or  failure  of  the  striving,  its 
intensity  by  the  strength  of  the  tendenc)^/When,  then, 
the  pleasure-pain  theorist  tells  us  that  feeling  determines 
conation,  we  must  ask  what  determines  the  feeling ; and, 
if  he  replies  that  cognition  of  some  object  is  the  imme- 
diate condition  of  feeling,  we  point  to  these  numerous 
instances  in  which  the  feeling-tone  of  the  thought  of 
the  object  varies  from  pleasure  to  plain,  its  quality 
and  strength  being  obviously  determined,  not  directly 
by  cognition,  but  by  the  conation  it  evokes. 

But  if,  for  the  purpose  of  the  argument,  we  accept  the 
thesis  that  the  pleasure  of  the  idea  of  the  end,  the 
pleasure  that  we  experience  in  contemplating  the  end 
Is  the  spur  that  prompts  and  sustains  action. 


■e  why  is  the  thought  of  the  desired  end 


.tLuiiitu.  - Some  of  the  pleasure-pain  theorists  tell 
us  that  the  thought  of  the  desired  end  or  of  the  achieve- 
ment of  the  end  is  pleasant  because  this  end  is  in 
congruity  with  our  nature.*  Now  this  can  only  mean 
that  the  end  of  action  which  on  being  contemplated 
appears  pleasant  is  one  to  which  we  naturally  tend, 
that  is,  is  one  towards  which  we  feel  impelled  in 
virtue  of  a conative  disposition  directed  to  such  an 
end.  ! To  give  this  answer  is  then  implicitly  to  give 
up  the  pleasure-pain  theory  and  to  admit  the  truth  of 
\tbe  view  maintained  in  these  pages. 

VijThe  other  answer  to  this  question  as  to  the  source  or 
ground  of  the  pleasure  we  feel  in  contemplating  the  end 
of  action,  is  to  assert  that  all  feelings  are  primarily  the 
pleasures  and  pains  of  sense,  that  certain  sensations  are 
intrinsically  pleasant  and  others  intrinsically  unpleasant, 
and  that  all  other  pleasures  and  pains  are  derived  from 


we  find  that  two  different  answers  are 


E.g.,  Prof.  Muirhead,  op.  cit. 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION 


371 

these  by  association.  According  to  this  doctrine,  which 
has  been  most  fully  elaborated  by  G.  H.  Schneider, ^ 
the  sight  of  food  is  pleasant,  because  the  pleasure  of  its 
taste  has  become  associated  with  the  visual  impression 
according  to  the  principle  of  contiguity ; and  the  pleasure 
thus  associated  with  the  visual  perception  or  representa- 
tion of  food  is  the  condition  of  the  desire  for  food,  and 
prompts  and  sustains  our  efforts  to  obtain  it.  This 
answer  may  seem  plausible  when  applied  to  explain 
desires  whose  satisfaction  normally  involves  sense- 
pleasures;  though  even  in  their  case  it  is  open  to  several 
very  serious  objgcticms.  First,  the  notion  of  the  asso- 
ciation of  pleasure  with  ideas  of  objects  according  to 
the  principle  of  contiguity  is  of  very  questionable 
validity.  Secondly,  the  fact  that  the  feeling-tone  of 
desire  for  an  object  may  vary,  as  we  have  seen,  from 
the  extreme  of  pain  to  the  extreme  of  pleasure  is 
irreconcilable  with  this  view ; for  it  shows  that  there  is 
no  fixed  association  of  pleasure  with  the  idea  of  the 
desired  object,  but  that  the  feeling-tone  of  the  thought 
of  the  object  is  a function  of  the  way  we  think  about  it, 
being  pleasant  when  we  think  of  it  as  attainable,  un- 
pleasant when  we  think  of  it  as  unattainable.  Further, 
this  answer  has  no  plausibility  when  applied  to  the 
many  desires  the  satisfaction  of  which  involves  no  sense- 
pleasure,  such  as  the  desires  for  applause,  for  revenge, 
for  knowledge. 

yAnd  we  may  attack  the  doctrine  at  the  root  by 
/questioning  its  fundamental  assumption,  namely,  that 
certain  sensations  are  intrinsically  pleasurable  and 
others  intrinsically  painful.  This  assumption  seems 
most  plausible  in  the  case  of  what  are  called  physical 
pains,  but  even  in  this  connexion  its  validity  may  be 


* Der  Menschliche  Wille,''  Berlin,  1882. 


372 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


seriously  questioned.  It  may  be  maintained  that  what 
we  call  a painful  sensation  is  essentially  a sense-impres- 
sion which  evokes  aversion,  a conative  tendency  to 
escape  or  withdraw  from  the  situation,  a tendency  which 
usually  manifests  itself  clearly  enough,  as  when  the 
hand  is  snatched  away  from  a hot  surface  or  a pricking 
point ; and  that  painful  feeling  only  arises  in  so  far  as 
this  conation  fails  to  attain  its  end.  It  seems  to  be  just 
for  this  reason  that  such  sensations  as  toothache  and 
other  strong  sensations  from  inflamed  organs  are  so 
intensely  painful.  The  various  organs  are  endowed 
with  their  capacities  for  evoking  these  strong  sensations, 
in  order  that  they  may  be  withdrawn  from  the  influence 
of  the  excessive  stimuli — the  sensitivity  of  the  teeth, 
for  example,  serves  primarily  to  prevent  our  biting 
strongly  on  hard  substances  on  which  they  might  be 
broken.  But  when,  as  in  toothache,  tendencies  which 
such  strong  sense-impressions  excite  fail  to  terminate  the 
impression,  and  we  vainly  throw  ourselves  about,  rock 
to  and  fro,  or  writhe  in  a thousand  ways,  the  situation 
is  intensely  painful.  Our  power  of  voluntarily  sup- 
porting sense-impressions  that  normally  are  painful 
points  in  the  same  direction.  When  for  any  reason  we 
voluntarily  submit  to  strong  sense-impressions  (as  when 
we  have  a tooth  filled  by  the  dentist,  making  up  our 
minds  to  submit  to  the  necessary  pain),  we  suppress  by 
a strong  effort  of  will  partially  or  wholly  the  tendency 
to  escape  the  strong  sense-impression ; and,  in  so  far  as 
we  are  successful  in  this,  it  loses  its  painful  character. 
In  this  way  also,  I think,  we  must  understand  such 
extreme  examples  of  fortitude  as  the  calm  behaviour  of 
the  Indian  brave  or  the  Christian  martyr  under  torture  ; 
the  training  and  beliefs  of  such  persons  render  them 
capable  of  voluntarily  submitting  to  the  torture  and  of 
suppressing  by  strong  volition  the  tendency  to  struggle 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION 


373 


to  escape  evoked  by  the  strong  sense-impressions;  and, 
in  so  far  as  they  succeed  in  this,  the  experience  ceases 
to  be  painful — the  stake  and  the  rack  are  robbed  of 
their  terrors.  For  the  same  reason  hunger,  voluntarily 
submitted  to  (as  when  we  fast  for  the  sake  of  our 
health)  is  but  a matter  of  small  discomfort,  though  we  are 
told  that  it  is  very  painful  when  suffered  involuntarily. 

It  may  be  maintained  with  equal  plausibility  that 
the  pleasures  of  sense  also  are  conditioned  by  conation. 
If  we  consider  the  case  of  the  pleasures  of  the  palate,  we 
see  that  the  pleasant  tastes  are  those  which  stimulate  us 
to  maintain  the  processes  of  mastication  and  deglutition. 
According  to  the  pleasure-pain  theory,  these  activities 
are  induced  and  maintained  by  the  pleasure  which  the 
taste  excites.  But  how  can  this  view  be  maintained  in 
face  of  the  fact  that  the  same  taste  qualities  cease  to  be 
pleasing  so  soon  as  they  cease  to  evoke  these  activities  ? 
Thus,  one  who  likes  sweet  things  finds  the  taste  of  sugar 
pleasant  so  long  as  it  subserves  its  normal  function  of 
exciting  the  processes  of  ingestion ; but  as  soon  as 
repletion  ensues,  the  tendency  to  mastication  and 
deglutition  can  no  longer  be  excited  by  the  sweet 
taste  (for  this  requires  the  co-operation  of  certain  visceral 
conditions  which  are  abolished  by  repletion),  and  the 
mastication  of  the  sugar  then  ceases  to  be  pleasant, 
and  may  even  become  decidedly  unpleasant,  if  for 
any  reason  we  persist  in  it. 

It  appears,  then,  that  even  in  those  instances  most 
favourable  to  the  pleasure-pain  theory,  the  facts  are 
difficult  to  reconcile  with  it,  and  are  more  consistently 
in  harmony  with  the  opposite  view,  namely,  that 
pleasure  and  pain  are  always  conditioned  by  the 
success  and  failure  of  conation,  respectively.  And  the 
superiority  of  the  latter  view  will  be  established  if  we 
can  point  to  instances  in  which  activity  is  unmis- 


374 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


takably  independent  of  pleasure  and  pain ; for  by 
such  instances,  the  pleasure-pain  theorist  would  be 
compelled  to  admit  that  his  theory  of  action  holds 
good  of  some  activities  only,  and  that  others  require  a 
different  theory  for  their  explanation,  namely,  the 
theory  which  makes  feeling  dependent  on  conation 
and  which  seems  quite  adequate  to  the  explanation  of 
the  types  of  activity  most  favourable  to  the  pleasure- 
pain  theory.  /Such  instances  we  may  find  at  the  two 
extremes  of  human  behaviour ; namely,  in  the  actions 
implying  the  highest  moral  effort  and  in  merely 
habitual  actions.  Whether  or  no  we  accept  as  true 
the  story  of  the  voluntary  return  of  Regulus  to 
captivity  and  death,  we  all  recognize  that  it  represents 
a possible  type  of  conduct.  Now,  while  psychological 
hedonism  has  to  explain  such  conduct  by  supposing 
that  Regulus  was  more  averse  to  the  pains  of  remorse 
than  to  those  of  bodily  torture  and  death,  the  pleasure- 
pain  theory  is  driven  to  suppose  that  the  contemplation 
of  the  heroic  line  of  action  yielded  Regulus  a high 
degree  of  pleasure,  and  that  this  pleasure  impelled  him 
to  pursue  this  line  of  action  even  though  he  anticipated 
from  it  a painful  death ; or  the  alternative  explanation 
might  be  suggested,  that  he  found  his  absence  from 
Carthage  so  painful  that  he  was  impelled  by  this  pain 
to  return  thither.  Surely,  whether  from  the  ethical  or 
the  psychological  standpoint,  this  form  of  the  hedonic 
theory  when  applied  to  such  instances  of  hard  choice, 
appears  hardly  less  fantastic  than  psychological  hedo- 
nism ! Surely  it  is  obvious  that  men  do  often  carry 
through  a line  of  action  which  is  to  them  painful  in 
every  phase,  in  the  contemplation  of  it,  in  deciding  upon 
it,  and  in  its  execution  and  achievement ! Consider  the 
more  familiar  instance  of  the  father  who  feels  himself 
impelled  to  inflict  severe  punishment  upon  a beloved 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION 


375 


child,  such  as  the  withholding  from  it  the  enjoyment  of 
something  to  which  they  had  both  looked  forward, 
hoping  to  enjoy  it  together.  At  every  stage  the  father 
hates  the  necessity  laid  upon  him,  and  knows  that  he 
himself  is  sacrificing  a keen  pleasure  and  undertaking 
a painful  task.  It  would  be  absurd  to  say  that  the 
father’s  conduct  is  sustained  by  the  pleasure  of  the 
thought  of  the  improved  conduct  or  character  of  his 
son  which  the  punishment  may  bring  about.  Even  if 
at  times  he  may  find  consolation  in  this  thought,  it  can 
be  but  momentarily ; and  such  pleasure  will  be  in  the 
main  wholly  submerged  and  neutralized  by  his  sympa- 
thetic pain  and  by  the  violence  he  does  to  the  immediate 
promptings  of  parental  love. 

Instances  of  purely  habitual  and  quasi-mechanical 
actions  are  not  less  decisive.  We  sometimes  find 
ourselves  performing  some  trivial  familiar  action, 
without  having  intended  or  resolved  to  do  it,  but 
merely  because  we  happen  to  be  in  a situation  in 
which  this  action  is  habitually  performed ; as  when 
one  winds  up  one’s  watch  on  changing  one’s  waistcoat. 
Such  ‘‘absent-minded”  actions  involve  a minimum  of 
attention,  but  are  nevertheless  conations ; they  are  the 
expressions  of  habits,  and  seem  to  be  independent  of 
pleasure  and  pain,  whether  anticipated  or  experienced 
at  the  moment.  Such  an  action  is  immediately  in- 
duced by  the  sense-impressions  of  the  moment ; they 
bring  into  play  the  specialized  conative  disposition 
which  is  the  habit.  Such  actions,  better  perhaps  than 
any  others,  enable  us  to  understand  in  some  degree  the 
way  in  which  many  of  the  actions  of  the  animals  are 
performed. 

We  may  pass  on  to  consider  other  theories  of  action  ; 
and  we  may  notice  first  the  only  remaining  theory 
which  makes  any  claim  to  be  applicable  to  human 


376 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


behaviour  of  all  types  and  levels.  This  is  the  intel- 
lectualist— theory  of  action  which  attributes  action 
immediately  to  “ ideas,”  ignoring  the  obvious  fact  that 
the  development  and  organization  of  character,  or  of  the 
conative  side  of  the  mind,  is  largely  distinct  from  and 
independent  of  the  development  and  organization  of 
knowledge,  the  cognitive  side  of  the  mind.  Prominent 
among  older  exponents  of  this  theory  was  Herbart, 
and,  among  contemporaries.  Professor  Bosanquet  and 
(if  I have  not  wholly  failed  to  understand  his  writings) 
Mr.  F,  H.  Bradley. 

According  to  this  theory,  the  mind  consists  of  a more 
or  less  highly  organized  system  of  ideas ; and  every 
idea  is  both  an  intellectual  entity  and  a tendency  to 
action.  The  type  of  all  the  higher  forms  of  action  is 
the  so-called  ideo-motor  action,  the  action  which  is 
supposed  to  result  directly  from  the  presence  in  con- 
sciousness of  the  idea  of  that  action.  Volition  is  merely 
a somewhat  complicated  instance  of  such  ideo-motor 
action. 

Now,  it  may  be  seriously  questioned  whether  any 
action  really  conforms  to  the  alleged  ideo-motor  type. 
Actions  proceeding  from  so-called  fixed  ideas  have 
usually  been  regard^  as  examples  par  excellence  of 
ideo-motor  action. -^ut  the  modern  developments  of 
psycho-pathology  are  making  it  clear  that  in  all  such 
cases  the  fixed  idea  is  fixed,  and  is  capable  of  deter- 
mining action,  just  because  it  is  functionally  associated 
with  some  strong  conative  tendency.  /But,  putting 
aside  this  objection  and  accepting  for  the  purpose  of  the 
discussion  the  notion  of  ideo-motor  action,  I urge  that 
it  would  be  manifestly  absurd  to  say  that  action  which 
is  carried  out  with  painful  effort  against  inner  and 
outer  difficulties  of  all  sorts,  is  simple  ideo-motor  action. 
We  have  to  ask — W-hat  gives  the  one  idea  of  action 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION 


377 


t^e  power  to  prevail  oyer  other  ideas  of  action  equally 
vividly  conceived  ? Bradley’s  answer  to  this  question 
is  that  the  self  identifies  itself  with  the  end  the  idea 
of  which  prevails.!  Bosanquet  answers  that  it  is 
attention  to  the  one  idea.  Both  answers  are  true 
if  the  “ self”  and  “ attention  ” are  understood  in  the  true 
sense ; that  is,  if  the  self  is  understood  as  the  vast 
organization  of  conative  dispositions  which  is  the  char- 
acter, and  if  attention  is  understood  as  conation  reveal- 
ing itself  in  cognition.  But  for  Bosanquet  attention 
is  merely  apperception  in  the  Herbartian  sense,  the 
fusion  of  an  idea  with  a mass  of  congruous  ideas  ; and 
since  conation  is  not  recognized,  the  congruity  implied 
is  logical  congruity.  Whatever  idea  of  action,  then, 
is  congruous  with  other  ideas  of  action  is  apperceived 
or  attended  to,  and  therefore  predominates  over  other 
ideas ; and  this  is  volition.  Bosanquet  adds  that  “ in 
cases  of  deliberative  action  at  a high  level  of  conscious- 
ness, the  self  or  personality  participates,  ?>.,  one  of  the 
ideas  which  are  striving  for  predominance  reinforces 
itself  by  the  whole  mass  of  our  positive  personality.”® 
But  he  explains  that  the  whole  self  or  personality  is 
merely  a mass  of  ideas  with  their  accompaniments  of 
feeling,  “ a fabric  of  ideas  accompanied  with  their 
affections  of  pleasure  and  pain,  and  having  a tendency 
to  assert  themselves  in  so  far  as  they  become  partly 
discrepant  from  reality.”  3 And  in  Bradley’s  view  also 
the  self  seems  to  be  merely  a “ fabric  of  ideas.”  yin  this 
intellectualist  theory  of  action,  then,  conation,  or  will, 
which,  as  has  been  maintained  throughout  this  volume, 
is  the  very  foundation  of  all  life  and  mind,  is  simply 
ignored ; and  my  criticism  of  it  must  consist  in  pointing 

‘ Series  of  papers  in  Mind,  N.S.  vols.  ix-xiii, 

* ‘‘  Psychology  of  the  Moral  Self,”  p,  77. 

I Op-  cit.  p.  91, 


378 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


to  all  that  has  been  said  of  instinct,  sentiment,  and 
volition  in  this  book.  Unless  all  this  is  the  purely  fanci- 
ful construction  of  a diseased  brain,  this  intellectualist 
doctrine  is  radically  false.  I will  only  point  out  in 
addition  that,  when  we  turn  to  the  lower  forms  of  life, 
I the  impotence  of  this  theory  is  at  once  clear ; for, 

I since  at  that  level  we  cannot  postulate  “ideas,”  all 
action  has  to  be  interpreted  as  purely  mechanical  reflex 
action  ; and  we  are  then  faced  with  the  problem  of 
evolving  intellect  and  will  from  unconscious  mechanism, 
a task  to  which,  as  is  generally  recognized,  the  ingenuity 
of  Herbert  Spencer  himself  proved  inadequate. 

All  other  theories  of  human  conduct  may  be  classed 
^ together  in  virtue  of  the  fact  that  they  place  moral 
conduct  in  a separate  category,  apart  from  all  other 
forms  of  behaviour,  and  attribute  it  to  some  special 
faculty  peculiar  to  human  beings,  which  they  call 
“ conscience,”  or  “ the  moral  sense,”  or  “ reason,”  or  the 
“ rational  will,”  or  “ the  sense  of  duty  ” ; a faculty  which 
seems  to  be  conceived  as  having  been  implanted  in  the 
human  mind  by  a special  act  of  the  Creator,  rather  than 
j as  being  the  product  of  the  slow  processes  of  evolution. 
! Most  of  those  who  attribute  moral  conduct  to  any  such 
special  faculty  recognize  that  human  nature  comprises 
also  certain  lower  principles  of  action,  which  they  call 
animal  propensities,  instincts,  or  passions ; and  these  are 
^ regarded  as  regrettable  survivals  of  our  animal  ancestry, 
unworthy  of  the  attention  of  a moral  philosopher. 

All  these  doctrines  are  open  to  two  very  serious 
objections:  (i)  that  they  are  incompatible  with  the 
principle  of  the  continuity  of  evolution ; (2)  that  they 
are  forms  of  the  “ faculty  doctrine  ” whose  fallacies  have 
so  often  been  exposed.'  But  a few  words  must  be  said 
about  the  more  important  of  them.  When  authors  tell 
us  that  “ reason  ” is  the  principle  of  moral  action,  it  is 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION 


379 


necessary  to  point  out  that/the  function  of  reason  is 
merely  to  deduce  new  propositions  from  propositions 
already  accepted.  Suppose  a hungry  man  to  be  in 
the  presence  of  a substance  which  he  does  not  recog- 
nize as  food ; by  the  aid  of  reason  he  may  discover  that 
it  is  edible  and  nutritious,  and  he  will  then  eat  it  or 
desire  to  eat  it ; but,  if  he  is  not  hungry,  reason  will  not 
create  the  desire  or  impel  him  to  eat.  And  in  the  moral 
sphere  the  function  of  reason  is  the  same.  ^Reason  aids 
us  in  determining  what  is  good,  and  in  deducing  from 
our  knowledge  oL  the  good  conclusions  as  to  what 
actions  are  right. /But,  unless  a man  already  hungers  for 
righteousness,  already  desires  to  do  whatever  is  right,  to 
be  whatever  is  virtuous,  unless,  that  is,  he  possesses  the 
moral  sentiments  and  moral  character,  reason  cannot 
impel  him  to  do  right  or  to  desire  it.  To  create  desire 
is  a task  beyond  its  competence  ; it  can  only  direct 
pre-existing  tendencies  towards  their  appropriate  objects. 
It  is  therefore  a grave  error  on  the  part  of  some  authors^ 
to  say  that  reason  may  create  a desire  for  a moral 
quality ; or  to  say  (as  Sidgwick  said)  that  in  rational 
beings  as  such  the  cognition  or  judgment  that  this  is 
right  or  ought  to  be  done  “ gives  an  impulse  or  motive  to 
action.”  For  this  is  not  true  of  rational  beings  as  such 
— in  Satan,  we  may  suppose,  no  such  impulse  would  be 
awakened  by  this  issue  of  the  reasoning  process.  It  is 
true  only  of  moral  or  moralized  beings  as  such,  beings 
who  already  desire  to  be  virtuous  and  to  do  the  right. 
It  is  only  by  arbitrarily  and  implicitly  defining  the 
‘‘  rational  being  ” as  one  who  desires  to  do  right,  that  the 

* E.g.,  Dr.  Rashdall  who  writes : It  is  true  that  the  action 

cannot  be  done  unless  there  is  an  impulse  to  do  what  is  right 
or  reasonable  on  our  part,  but  such  a desire  may  be  created  by 
the  Reason  which  recognizes  the  rightness.'*  Theory  of  Good 
and  Evil,’*  vol.  i.  p.  io6). 


38o 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


doctrine  is  made  to  seem  plausible.  Nor  is  this  doc- 
trine, that  moral  conduct  proceeds  from  the  reason, 
appreciably  improved  when  “ the  rational  will  ” is  put 
in  the  place  of  “ reason.”  This  may  seem  to  avoid  the 
intellectualist  fallacy  of  assigning  intellectual  processes 
as  the  springs  of  action.  But,  unless  some  further  account 
of  the  will  is  given,  this  doctrine  is  in  no  way  superior 
to  the  doctrine  of  “ conscience ; ” for  the  “ rational  will  ” 
remains  a mere  word,  by  which  we  denote  the  fact  that 
we  do  make  deliberate  moral  choices  and  decisions,  and 
that  such  choice  is  not  merely  the  issue  of  a brute 
conflict  of  opposed  desires. 

Though  the  intuitionist  doctrines  which  attribute 
moral  judgment,  moral  choice  and  effort,  to  a special 
faculty,  have  been  variously  stated,  and  though  the 
supposed  faculty  has  received  a variety  of  names,  they 
are  essentially  similar  and  need  not  be  separately  con- 
sidered. We  may  consider  that  form  which  derives 
from  Kant  and  attributes  our  moral  judgments  and 
conduct  to  “the  sense  of  duty.”  It  is  no  longer  seriously 
contended  that  all  the  actions  of  any  moral  being  spring 
from  the  “ moral  faculty.”  It  is  admitted  that  upon 
most  of  the  ordinary  occasions  of  life  our  actions  spring 
from  other  principles  or  sources.  But  it  is  maintained 
that,  in  deliberation  which  issues  in  moral  decision,  this 
issue  is  determined  by  the  co-operation  of  “ the  sense  of 
duty.”  The  “ sense  of  duty  ” is  in  fact  the  last  refuge  of 
intuitionism,  of  those  moralists  who  insist  upon  making 
of  man’s  moral  nature  a mystery,  separate  from  the 
larger  mystery  of  mind,  and  implying  laws  of  an  order 
radically  different  from  those  which  govern  behaviour  in 
general.  Canon  Rashdall  writes : “ In  claiming  for  the 
idea  of  duty  not  merely  existence  but  authority,  we  have 
implied  that  the  recognition  that  something  is  our  duty 
supplies  us  with  what  we  recognize  upon  reflection  as  a 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION 


381 


sufficient  motive  for  doing  it.  . . . The  recognition  of 
the  thing  as  right  is  capable  of  producing  an  impulse  to 
the  doing  of  it.''^  And  he  speaks  of  the  “sense  of 
duty  ” as  being  “ the  one  all-sufficient  motive  present  to 
the  consciousness  ” at  moments  of  moral  crisis.^ 

This  doctrine,  if  true,  obviates  the  need  for  all  psycho- 
logical investigation  or  reflection  on  the  part  of  the 
moral  philosopher;  except  in  so  far  as  he  desires  to 
expose  the  errors  of  his  predecessors,  by  showing  how 
they  proceed  from  a false  and  unnecessarily  complicated 
psychology,  such  as  that  of  Kant  or  that  of  the  founders 
of  Utilitarianism.  For  the  whole  of  the  positive  , 
psychology  required  by  him  is  contained  in  a nutshell,  in 
the  sentence:  “Reason  proclaims  my  duty,  and  my  sense  ^ 
of  duty  impels  me  to  do  it.”  But  some  of  the  modern 
exponents  of  intuitionism,  unfortunately  for  the  con- 
sistency of  their  doctrine,  are  not  content  to  leave  their 
“sense  of  duty”  an  utterly  mysterious  faculty  of  which 
nothing  more  can  be  said.  Sidgwick  asserted  that  the 
notion  of  “ought”  or  duty  is  too  elementary  to  admit 
of  formal  definition ; and  in  the  same  spirit  Dr.  Rashdall 
tells  us  that  the  idea  that  something  ought  to  be  done 
“ is  an  unanalysable  idea  which  is  involved  in  all  ethical 
judgments.”  But  he  ventures  further  and  tells  us  that 
“ Duty  means  precisely  devotion  to  the  various  kinds  of 
good  in  proportion  to  their  relative  value  and  import- 
ance”;3  and  again:  “At  bottom  the  sense  of  duty  is  the 
due  appreciation  of  the  proportionate  objective  value  of 
ends.”  4 From  this  it  appears  that,  by  the  admission  of 
a prominent  exponent  of  the  intuitionist  doctrine,  “ the 
sense  of  duty  ” is  not  an  ultimate  element  of  the  moral 

• Theory  of  Good  and  Evil,"  vol.  i.  p.  104. 

• Op.  cit.j  vol.  i.  p.  121.  3 Op.  cii.,  vol.  i.  p.  125. 

^ Op.  cit.j  vol.  i.  p.  128. 


382 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


consciousness,  is  not  an  unanalysable  idea  anti  at  the 
same  time  an  impulse  to  action ; rather  it  appears  as 
the  highly  abstract  name  for  all  that  immensely  com- 
plex part  of  the  mental  organization  which  is  the  moral 
character,  and  which  comprises  the  system  of  the  moral 
sentiments  and  the  developed  self-regarding  sentiment. 
For  it  is  the  possession  of  developed  moral  character, 
and  this  alone,  that  enables  us  to  judge  rightly  of  the 
relative  values  of  moral  goods  and  impels  us  to  pursue 
the  best ; and,  as  I have  tried  to  show  in  this  book,  and 
as  indeed  is  now  generally  admitted,/this  complex 
|organization  which  is  moral  character  is  only  acquired 
, by  any  individual  by  a slow  process  of  growth  continued 
) through  many  years  under  the  constant  pressure  of  the 
^social  environment  and  of  the  moral  tradition.  Our 
) “ sense  of  duty  ” is,  in  short,  at  the  lower  moral  level 
' our  sense  of  what  is  demanded  of  us  by  our  fellows ; 
) and,  at  the  higher  moral  level,  it  is  our  sense  of  what  we 
■ demand  of  ourselves  in  virtue  of  the  ideal  of  character 
> that  we  have  formed.  How  and  why  we  respond  to 
) these  demands  made  upon  us  by  our  fellows  and  by 
ourselves,  and  how  we  come  to  make  these  demands,  I 
have  tried  to  show  by  means  of  a general  theory  of  action, 
a theory  of  the  moral  sentiments  and  a theory  of  volition. 

Before  dismissing  the  theory  of  “a  moral  faculty,” 
I must  add  that  in  one  respect  the  intuitionist  doctrine 
is  true ; namely,  it  is  true  that  when  we  have  acquired 
moral  sentiments  we  do  frequently  both  pass  moral 
judgments  and  make  moral  efforts  without  any  weighing 
of  the  consequences  of  action.  But  to  admit  or  to 
establish  this  is  neither  to  justify  the  doctrine  of  “a 
moral  faculty,”  nor  to  deny  that  our  moral  judgments 
frequently  need  correction  by  reference  to  the  con- 
sequences of  action  upon  human  welfare,  the  only  true 
and  ultimate  criterion  of  moral  value. 


( 


THEORIES  OF  ACTION 


383 


We  may  admit  also  the  possibility  that,  though  the 
moral  sentiments  are  in  the  main  built  up  anew  in  each 
individual  in  the  way  roughly  sketched  in  the  pages 
of  this  volume,  some  predisposition  to  their  formation 
may  be  inherited,  and  that,  in  so  far  as  this  is  the  case, 
the  capacity  of  moral  judgment,  which  is  rooted  in  them, 
may  be  said  to  be  innate  and,  in  that  sense,  a priori, 
p It  only  remains  to  show  that  the  theory  of  action 
"here  set  forth  is  implied  in  the  doctrines  of  some 
eminent  philosophers  (although  it  has  not  been  explicitly 
stated  by  them),  and  most  clearly  perhaps  by  T.  H. 
Green  and  Prof.  Stout.  These  authors  recognize  the 
actions  of  animals  as  true  conations  or  expressions  of 
will,  in  the  wider  sense  of  the  word  “will.”  They 
recognize  that  human  nature  is  capable  of,  or  liable  to, 
similar  modes  of  primitive  conation ; and  that  desire 
is  a comparatively  complex  mode  of  conation  of  which, 
perhaps,  in  the  proper  sense  men  only  are  capable,  ,/^ut 
they  do  not  claim  that  volition  or  moral  conduct  is 
nothing  more  than  the  issue  of  a conflict  of  desires. 

I They  rightly  tell  us  that  these  simpler  modes  of 
conation,  blind  impulses,  cravings,  and  desires,  are  some- 
thing that  each  man  experiences  as,  in  a sense,  forces 
i acting  upon  him,  impelling  him  towards  this  or  that 
line  of  action  ; and  that  he  knows  that  his  true  self 
I can  either  oppose  such  tendencies,  or  can  accept  them  ; 
and  that  only  when  the  self  thus  intervenes  to  accept  or 
jresist  desire  or  impulse  do  we  perform  a volitional  act. 
And  by  the  self  they  do  not  mean  an  abstract  entity 
of  which  no  account  can  be  given.  Green  tells  us  that 
by  the  true  self  he  means  the  character  of  the  man ; 
he  uses  also  the  term  “ conscience  ” to  convey  the  same 
notion ; and  by  conscience  he  means  something  which 
has  a history  in  the  life  of  the  individual,  something  that 
is  slowly  built  up  in  the  course  of  moral  training  and 


384 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


under  the  influence  of  the  social  environment ; con- 
science or  moral  character  is,  in  short,  in  Green’s  view 
an  organized  system  of  habits  of  will. 

Stout  also  tells  us  that  volition  is  distinguished  from 
mere  conflict  of  desires  by  the  decisive  intervention 
of  self-consciousness  ; and  that  this  self,  which  in  moral 
conflict  self-consciously  throws  itself  upon  the  side 
of  one  desire  and  against  others,  is  a unified  system 
of  interests.  Now  an  interest  is,  for  Stout,  a conative 
tendency  with  the  accompanying  potentialities  of 
feeling ; and  the  self,  therefore,  is  a unified  system  of 
conative  tendencies. 

These  authors,  then,  have  put  forward  in  very  general 
terms  the  theory  of  action  which  I am  defending. 
They  recognize  will  as  a fundamental  faculty  co-ordinate 
with  cognition ; they  recognize  that  in  all  organisms 
(animals  and  men  alike),  this  faculty  of  striving  is 
directed  either  vaguely  or  with  more  or  less  of  pre- 
cision towards  certain  kinds  of  action  which  tend  to 
secure  specific  ends ; that  when  these  conative  ten- 
dencies are  brought  into  play  in  relative  isolation, 
sporadic  impulse,  desire,  or  action  is  the  result ; and 
they  recognize  that  moral  volition  and  moral  conduct 
depend  upon  the  systematic  organization  of  such 
tendencies ; that  in  short,  moral  volition  expresses 
character  or  is  character  in  action.  Their  doctrines, 
then,  imply  the  thesis  here  maintained ; namely,  that 
in  order  to  explain  or  understand  any  action  we  have 
to  exhibit  it  as  the  expression  of  some  single  conative 
disposition,  or  of  a conflict  of,  or  of  some  conjunction  of, 
such  tendencies,  according  to  the  plan  of  organization  of 
the  character ; and  that,  when  we  thus  show  it  to  be  an 
instance  of  conation  or  appetition  conforming  to  the 
most  general  laws  of  appetition,  we  do  all  that  as  men 
of  science  we  can  be  called  upon  to  do. 


INDEX 


A 

Abstract  sentiments,  219 
Action  in  line  of  greatest  resist- 
ance, 251 

Action  in  spite  of  pain,  374 
Adam  Smith,  256 
Addispn  on  instinct,  29 
Admiration,  128 

„ aesthetic,  227 
Altruism  and  parental  instinct, 
76 

Amok,  141 

Ancestor  worship,  274 
Anger,  59 
Animism,  304 
Ancetic  sentience,  360 
Anxiety,  137 
Approval,  144,  217 

„ is  it  an  emotion  ? 217 
Aristocracies  and  imitation,  344 
Art  and  social  solidarity,  346 
Association  psychology,  16,  43 
Atkinson,  J.  J.,  on  primal  law, 
282 

Attention  and  volition,  242 
Attraction  of  the  like,  301 
Authority  and  the  development 
of  self-regarding  sentiment, 
194 

Awe,  131 

„ in  religion,  305 
Aztecs,  310 

B 

Bagehot,  W.,  283 
Bain,  A.,  43,  70,  76 

A4 


Baldwin,  J.  M.,  91, 103,  145 
Balfour,  A.  J.,  320 
Bashfulness,  146 
Beck,  A.,  333 
Behaviour,  marks  of,  354 

„ increased  efficiency 
of,  355 

Bentham,  9,  154 
Birth  - rate  and  the  social 
sanctions,  270 

Bosanquet,  Professor  B.,  on 
action,  376 
Bosanquet,  Mrs.,  12 
Bradley,  F.  H.,  no,  376 
Bramwell,  J.  M.,  247 

C 

Cake  of  custom,  309 
Capital  punishment,  75 
Character,  258 

„ strong,  260 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  150 
Collective  mental  process,  327 
„ voice  of  society,  196 
Communal  responsibility,  31 1 
Comte,  I 
Conation,  28 
Conations,  scale  of,  250 
Conative  unity  of  trains  of 
action,  176 

Conative  dispositions,  361 
Conduct  and  behaviour,  352 
Conditions  of  pleasure  and 
pain,  370 

Conflict  of  crude  impulses,  177 
Conscience,  8,  229 


386 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


Contempt,  135 
Contra-imitation,  345 
» -suggestion,  loi 
Control  of  pain,  372 
Conversion  of  means  to  ends, 
349 

Courts,  influence  of  royal,  343 
Cousin,  V.,  12 
Coyness,  83 
Crowds,  86,  298 
Curiosity  and  evolution,  315 
„ and  social  progress, 

315 

„ instinct  of,  57 
D 

Darwin,  Charles,  5, 14,  22,  61 
Deficiencies  of  psychology,  2,  3 
De  Lapouge,  271 
Descartes,  121 
Desire  and  feeling,  369 
Dili  on  Roman  society,  271 
Disapproval,  144,  217 
Disgust,  55 

Disposition  defined,  120 
Diversities  of  moral  codes,  212 
Durkheim,  2 

E 

Economics,  10 
Egoist,  205 

Emotion,  criteria  of,  49 
„ defined,  47 
„ of  anger,  59 

„ of  disgust,  55 

„ of  elation,  62 

„ of  fear,  50 

„ of  subjection,  62 

„ of  wonder,  57 

„ tender,  66 
Emulation,  89,  it 2,  294 
Envy,  136 
Ethics,  7 
Eugenics,  295 
Experimental  methods,  7 
Extension  of  self -regarding 

sentiment,  207 


P 

Family,  the,  268 
Fascination,  136 
Fashion,  334 
Fear,  50 
„ in  birds,  35 
„ in  religion,  303,  308,  312 
Peeling-tone  of  emotion,  150 
Fielding  Hall,  276 
Flint,  Prof.,  12 
Forel,  Auguste,  82 
Fouillee,  A.,  13 
P'owler,  T.,  189,  213 
Free  will,  234 

Fustel  de  Coulanges,  275,  308 
G 

Galton,  F.,  84 
General  paralysis,  64 
Giddings,  F.,  298 
Gratitude,  132 

Green,  T.  H.,  9,  157,  220,  383 
Groos,  Karl,  30,  108 
Group  selection,  288 

H 

Habit,  43,  347 

„ and  custom,  347 
„ law  of,  1 15 
Habitual  action,  375 
Happiness,  154 
Hard  choice,  252 
Hate,  136 

Hatred,  development  of  senti- 
ment of,  164 
Hearn,  Lafcadio,  275 
Hedonism,  8 
Herbart,  376 
Herding  in  towns,  297 
History  of  social  sciences,  4 
Hoffding,  H.,  238 
Hose,  Charles,  289 
Hunger  and  feeling,  369 
Hypnosis,  97 
Hypnotic  suggestion,  247 


INDEX 


387 


I 

Ideo-motor  action,  376 
Imitation,  102,  326 

„ varieties  of,  loi 
Inhibition  and  volition,  244 
Instinct  defined,  23,  24,  29 

„ in  insects,  24 

„ its  relation  to  emotion, 

34. 42. 46 

„ loose  usage  illustrated, 

21 

„ modification  of,  31,  34 

„ not  mechanical,  27 

„ of  acquisition,  88,  322 

„ of  construction,  88, 324 

„ of  curiosity,  57 

„ of  flight,  49 

„ of  pugnacity,  59,  279 

„ of  reproduction,  82, 

266 

„ of  repulsion,  55 

„ of  subjection,  62,  321 

„ of  self-display,  62,  320 

„ the  gregarious,  84, 170, 

296 

„ the  parental,  66,  268 

Instinctive  behaviour,  24 
Instincts,  the  prime  movers,  27 
Introspection,  6,  15 

j 

James  on  will,  230 

„ William,  23,  85,  230 
Japanese  and  Chinese,  pug- 
nacity in,  292 
Jealousy,  83,  138 
Jews,  continuously  prolific,  274 

Joy,  151 

Judgment,  moral,  214 
Jurisprudence,  13 

K 

Kant,  7,  380 

Kidd,  Benjamin,  271,  278,  291 
Kirby  and  Spence,  29 
Kreutzer  Sonata,”  139 


L 

Lang,  Andrew,  282 
Lange- James  theory  of  emo- 
tions, 46,  52 
Latah,  104 
Legal  attitude,.  221 
Leuba  on  fear,  312 
Levels  of  conduct  defined,  18 1 
Literature  and  moral  senti- 
ments, 224 
Loathing,  136 
Love,  123 

„ of  justice,  225 


M 

Mackenzie  Wallace,  278 
Magic,  317 

„ and  religion,  relation  of, 
306 

Marshall,  Rutgers,  48 
Master-sentiment,  260 
Mechanism  and  morality,  357 
Mental  forces,  3 
Mercier,  C.,  144 
Military  selection,  290 
Mill,  J.  S.,  9,  154 
Modern  humanitarianism,  277 
Moral  evolution  outlined,  314 
„ faculty,  theor)?^  of,  378 
„ indignation,  73,  79 
„ judgment  and  emotion, 
213 

„ judgment  and  sugges- 
tion, 215 

„ judgment,  original  and 
imitative,  216 
„ sentiments,  219 
„ tradition,  220 
Morality,  its  evolution,  314 
Mouse  as  cause  of  fear,  54 
Muirhead,  Prof.  J.  H.,  367,  370 


N 

National  characteristics,  330 


388 


SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


O 

Omens,  308 

P 

Parental  sentiment,  growth  of, 
165 

Peckham,  Dr.  and  Mrs.,  30 
Persistence  of  effort,  354 
Personification  of  natural 
forces,  305 

Philosophy  of  history,  12 
Physical  and  mental  sciences, 
362 

Pity,  74,  81,  153 
Play,  theory  of,  107 
„ its  socialising  tendencies, 
345 

Pleasure  and  pain,  42 
Political  economy,  10 
„ science,  12 
Population  and  instincts,  267 
Praise  and  blame,  influence  of, 
188,  198 
Prestige,  99 

„ and  imitation,  339 

„ suggestion,  99 

Preyer,  W.,  106 
Pride,  192 

Prig.  257 

Primal  law,  282 

Primitive  sympathy,  theory  of, 
94 

Pseudo-altruism,  205 
„ -instincts,  90 
Psychological  Hedonism,  364 
Public  opinion,  influence  of, 
188 

„ opinion,  limitations,  2 10 
Pugnacity  and  evolution,  284 
„ and  morality,  288 

„ and  war,  281 

„ in  Borneo,  280,  289 

Punans,  322 

Purpose  and  mechanism,  356 
Purposive  activity,  wider  con- 
ception of,  357 
„ and  idea  of  end,  358 


Q 

Quasi-altruistic  sentiments,  206 
R 

Rashdall,  Hastings,  18, 229,  379 
Rational  beings,  379 
Reason  and  action,  379 
Recapitulation,  law  of,  108 
Recollection,  243 
Regular,  374 

Religion  and  morality,  313 
Religious  instinct,”  88,  302 
Renan,  88 
Reproach,  137 
Resentment,  140 
Respect,  161 
Responsibility,  232 
Retribution,  13 
Revenge,  140 
Reverence,  132 

„ its  genesis,  31 1 
Ribot,  Th.,  48,  62,  122 
Robertson  Smith,  333 
Ruling  passion,  259 

S 

Samaritan,  the  Good,  78 
Schallmayer,  271 
Schiller,  F.  C.  S.,  235 
Schneider,  G.  H.,  23,  36,  371 
Scope  of  psychology,  6,  15 
Scorn,  135 
Self,  182 

„ -consciousness,  develop- 
ment of,  182 

„ -control,  sentiment  for,  253 
„ -love,  161 

„ -regarding  sentiment,  de- 
velopment of,  193 
„ -regarding  sentiment,  ex- 
tensions of,  206 
Self  not  a fabric  of  ideas,  377 
Sensation  and  pain,  371 
„ and  pleasure,  373 
Sense  of  duty,  380 

„ and  character, 
382 


INDEX 


389 


Sentiment,  nature  of,  122 

„ physiological  inter- 
pretations of,  125 
Sentimentalists,  258 
Sentiments,  are  they  innate  ? 

159 

„ development  of, 

163, 165 

„ maternal,  165 

Serenity,  262 
Shame,  65,  145 
Shand,  A.  F.,  48,  70,  122,  150 
Sidgwick,  H.,  8,  379 
Slavery,  277 
Smith,  Adam,  60 
Sociability,  87 
Social  prohibition,  188 
„ uniformities,  329 
Sorrow,  81,  152 

Spencer,  Herbert,  22,  26,  43,  92 
„ and  Gillen,  270 
Steinmetz,  141 
Stoics,  7 

stout,  G.  F.,  239,  247,  383 
Stuart-Glennie,  316 
Suggestibility,  0 

„ conditions  of,  98 

„ defined,  97 

Suggestion,  96 

Sum  of  pleasures  not  happiness, 

156 

Surprise,  157 
Survivals  in  culture,  332 
Sutherland,  A.,  66,  68 
Sympathy,  active,  168,  173 
„ in  animals,  93 

„ primitive,  91 

T 

Tarde,  G.,  91,  102,  326 
Teleology,  progressive,  263 
Temperament,  116 
Tender  emotion  and  anger,  72 


Terror,  50 

Theory  of  action,  a,  352 

„ intuitionist,  378 

„ intellectualis  t, 

,376 

„ pleasure  - pain, 

366 

„ mechanical;  364 

Theories  of  causation,  318 
Thyroid  gland,  118 
Tiger  as  cause  of  fear,  52 
Torres  Straits,  people  of,  115 
Towns,  baneful  attraction  of, 
2q6 

Tribal  conflict,  290 

Tylor  on  primitive  religion,  304 

U 

Uncanniness  as  cause  of  fear, 
54 

Uniformity  of  human  mind,  20 
Unity  of  organism  in  be- 
haviour, 355 
Unreasonable  action,  8 
Utilitarianism,  8,  154 

V 

Variation  of  means,  354 
Vengeful  emotion,  140 
Volition  defined,  249 

„ (problem  of),  defined, 
236 

„ the  mark  of,  240 

„ scale  of,  250 

W 

Ward,  James,  52,  363 
„ Lester,  83 
Wester  march,  142,  144,  214 
Wonder,  57,  58 
Wordsworth,  74 
Wundt,  23,  244 


VNWIN  BROTHERS,  LTD., 


LONDON  AND  WOKING. 


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